Archive of Our Own

2001.

("Why are we here?")

He stood on the pier, tasting salt on his lips and blinking it out of his eyes.

He felt clear, more clear than he had in--

--days, and more than days--

His arm ached, his missing arm ("that's phantom pain, it will plague you; take these pills"). He rubbed his forehead ("we wanted the same thing, brother") and pain lanced through his head.

He didn't know his own goddamn name.

("My name is Alexei.")

("You should call me Afanasii.")

("I am Oleg Blackbeard.")

("I am Cory Raines.")

("I am William Fold.")

("My name is Arntzen.")

He knew what he was. He knew he was Immortal ("we live, we fight. I can teach you"). He had old memories, memories of the past ("come on, Mackie boy, it's all in fun!"), a little... faded, but there.

("Tonight it ends--") He fell to his knees, riding out the pain. He ran his hands through his hair and found, in the back, a circle of stubble shorter than the rest. He touched his forehead and felt a dimple in the middle of his brow.

Oh.

("You'll never take me alive, coppers!") He'd been shot in the head.

Things made sense.

He ("show me the mercy of God") knelt and emptied his pockets onto the pier and looked for clues about himself.

("There's a new land there, across the water. One day we will see it.")

He found a driver's license ("clutch! Gas! Now brake, brake, dammit, brake!"). His name was Sebastian St. John--no, no it wasn't. It felt wrong. He could ("my name is Alex") feel it fitting him ill ("my name is Alex") like a jacket too long in the sleeves.

There was blood under his nails. He had a vision of a hand touching him, reaching for his pocket, and his own hand striking in brainless reflex. So he had his wallet, and he had seven hundred dollars in his wallet, and his name was Alex.

("Hi. I'm Alex --") and fire lanced through his head and he doubled over and touched the damp wood.

Behind his eyes he saw a man. A giant in the snow with the prickle behind his eyes that told him he was Immortal. And another man--an extraordinary man, with--ha, that nose--and those eyes filled with love and pain. ("Brother.")

("Grandfather!") Someone he feared. Someone he loved.

He pressed his hand to the wood and felt a key. He knew exactly what it belonged to, he could see the airport luggage locker clearly in his mind. ("I must cross the water!") He would find his belongings there. Find ("I escaped from the prison")--a spare arm to hide the missing part of his body.

He looked out across the water. He remembered looking over this same expanse from the other side with a friend, a dear friend--but this was so long ago, so long, and he--

("how can men travel so far? They are so fragile")

--he could feel him, his teacher, there across the water, drawing him like a salmon up the river. That was why he had walked to the pier. That was where he had to go. His teacher would heal him and guide him.

("Their fragility is their strength. It gives them a reason to achieve--because there may not be a tomorrow.")

Methos stared the strange Immortal in the eye, silently daring him.

The other Immortal broke his gaze and hurried past, huddled under his umbrella. Smart man. Methos watched him turn a corner before heading into the bar.

He shivered the rain off his coat and headed directly behind the bar for a warm-up. "Hey, Joe."

"Make yourself at home," Joe said, rolling his eyes. He was bent over his accounts book at a table in front of the stage.

Methos poured himself a healthy glass of scotch. "Ta. Want anything?"

"Water. And some aspirin." Joe closed the book and leaned back, raising an eyebrow at Methos. "So... I hear Cory Raines is in town."

"You hear correctly." Methos ran a glass from the tap and hunted for the aspirin, finding it finally in a drawer full of bottle openers, tea bags and rubber bands.

"And staying at the barge."

He stuck the aspirin bottle between his teeth and walked back around the bar with a glass in each hand. "Yeah, well, there wasn't much choice about that," he said after handing the bottle to Joe, shrugging out of his coat, and settling in at Joe's table. "He was exhausted. He collapsed straight-away."

"And?"

Methos cocked his head at Joe. "Hm?"

"What else happened?"

"Nosy."

Joe rolled his eyes. "I guess I'll hear all about it from Bernard. He's been watching Mac for me for three weeks complaining about how boring it is. Has a pretty good poker game going with Amy, though. She's won fifty pounds off him so far." Amy was Joe's daughter and Methos' Watcher; he made sure to smile and wave whenever he spotted her.

"We'll be sure to leave the lights on when we get to the blood sacrifice and wild sexual hijinks." He clinked glasses with Joe and drank. "Cory's changed a lot since I last saw him, actually. He's an old friend."

"Oh yeah? His chronicle doesn't say anything about anyone like you." Joe pulled a little notepad out of his pocket.

Fine world when the Watchers didn't even try to be sneaky any more. Methos made a face and drank. "In a chatty mood, are we?"

"The question is, are you. You owe me, you freeloader," Joe insisted, pointing his pen at Methos.

"I see saving a man's life isn't the debt-canceler it used to be."

"When did you save my life?"

"About thirty seconds ago." Methos shook his sleeve knife from the holster and slapped it down on the table. He leaned back in his chair and grinned when Joe rolled his eyes. "Right, then. There's an interesting flaw in Cory's chronicle."

"Yeah?" Joe jotted down notes.

"It's the story of two men," Methos said. "One day in 1921, two Immortals boarded the same ocean liner, traveling from London to New York City. In the middle of the sea, there was a strange, sudden storm; in New York, one Immortal disembarked."

Joe glanced up at him. "So the man we have now is not the original Cory."

"Cory's Watcher sent a cable to New York rather than travel with him. Common practice with mild-mannered Immortals once communications became faster than actual travel. He told the other Watcher to look for a tall, young-looking, dark-haired man in a rich coat. He didn't realize there were Immortals that slipped under the radar. Alexei swiped everything--stole Cory's entire identity; it was better than his own. They looked similar enough that he passed with everyone."

"Man," Joe muttered. "Sloppy work on our part."

"Don't feel so bad. Alexei is very good." Methos gestured with his glass vaguely. "Trained by the best."

"The best being..."

"Me."

"Right." Joe wrote "1921" in the notebook and underlined it. "Mac never knew the real Cory, then."

"No, he was fish food."

"This other guy... Alexei? Have we ever had a Chronicle on him?" Joe drew a line in the notebook and scribbled "Alexei" under it.

"Not until he took over Cory's," Methos said, wondering exactly how much to tell Joe. He decided, though, that in the end it should be only the truth. "He was born in 1499 in Moscow. Street kid, tough as nails. I found him not long after he died and took him under my wing."

"Your student." Joe looked at Methos, pen stopped. "I thought you didn't take students."

Methos shot him a disgusted glare. "I do it all the time! You met Byron, and--I've had plenty of students." Best to stop there, before he gave Joe too many bread crumbs to follow... "Alexei came along at the right time--I taught him my trade as well. He was a good student. We made a mint, until business got a bit too good and we had to leave town in 1605."

"Too good? How does a business get too good?"

"Too much demand, too many bodyguards..." Methos said, smiling secretly to himself.

"Wait! 1605 was in the transition between Russian dynasties! That's a decade-long civil war! What kind of business is this?" Joe demanded.

Methos raised an eyebrow. He tossed back the rest of his drink, pushed up from the table and headed back to the bar.

"Hey!" Joe stood up slowly and followed him. Methos poured another drink. He picked up a towel from the bartop and toyed with it between his fingers. "What line of work were you in back then?"

Methos whirled the bar towel around itself and pulled it taut between his hands. "The assassination business, Joe." He held it up at throat level.

Joe looked at the towel. "Is Mac safe?"

Methos let it unroll. "Sure. If he doesn't make any sudden moves."

Duncan looked down at Cory, curled up on the bed beside him. He set his book down and tweaked Cory's nose.

Cory grabbed his hand painfully hard, as fast as lightning. His eyes opened slowly.

"A little jumpy," Duncan said.

"It's been a bad month," Cory whispered. "Can I have some water?"

"Sure." Duncan set the book on the nightstand as he stood. He crossed the room to the galley and took a bottle of water from the fridge.

The situation felt wrong. Cory acted different, sounded different. Maybe it was due to his injury--his left arm was missing--or maybe Cory had been faking all along.

Not that he wasn't used to that. "Bad how?" Duncan asked, screwing the top off the bottle. He handed it to Cory and Cory drank.

"You sound suspicious," Cory said. His voice sounded both better and more familiar. He tried a smile, but couldn't hold it.

"I've had a bad couple of years." Duncan perched on the edge of the bed, looking down at Cory. "I took your prosthetic off last night. What happened?"

Cory took another drink; the remnants of his smile faded, leaving his face hard and cold. Duncan had never seen him like that. He didn't meet Duncan's eyes. "I followed the wrong guy into the wrong place. It was--I think it was a while ago. I'm not sure."

"What guy? What place? Is anyone following you?"

"I don't know. I don't think anyone is looking for me--I mean, they would have found me." Cory pushed himself up against the headboard. "I was shot in the head. My brain--was jello. I was living in a cardboard box behind a dumpster when I woke up. I didn't know my name. I'm still missing things--I don't know what."

Cory rubbed the cold bottle against his forehead and grimaced, showing lines of pain. "Mob?" Duncan asked. "Police?

"I--" Cory closed his eyes. "I don't know. I think--I know things, but they don't all make sense, and I don't know how to put it together. I've never been shot in the head before."

"Me neither." Duncan stroked his hair. "You're a pain in the ass, Cory."

Cory leaned into the touch. He shivered, hip to shoulder to neck, and ended with a true, broad grin--looking like himself again. "Only if you make me a very happy man tonight..."

Duncan sighed. "Are you hungry?"

"Ravenous."

"It wouldn't surprise you to hear that I was a bootmaker; why be surprised to hear that I was an assassin?" Methos said, stretched out across two chairs. "Killing people is much easier than making boots."

Joe rubbed his forehead. "Can we talk about something else? Please?"

"I was a damned fine bootmaker," Methos said, thinking back happily upon boots well made.

"Have you told Mac about all this? He might want to know he's one on one with a trained killer."

Methos scoffed. "So what else is new? We're all trained killers. And besides, if he can't defend himself against a one-armed man, I want to know where the real MacLeod is stashed." He paused. "No offense, Joe."

"None taken!" Joe turned the page in his notebook. "One-armed, you say? He had all his bits and pieces last time, as far as I know."

Methos chopped at his left arm. "Between the biceps and triceps, healed clean. I don't know yet if it's growing back."

Joe raised an eyebrow. "They grow back?"

"Sometimes. My leg grew back," Methos said. He sipped the scotch.

Joe shook his head. "Some people have all the luck."

Methos put his glass down, looking at Joe. Joe wasn't hurt--at least, he didn't look hurt--but it had to sting a little. "Want a refill?"

"Get me a beer," Joe said as he scribbled notes into his book.

Methos fetched a beer for Joe and a refill for himself--after tossing back his first drink. After a moment's thought, he polished off the second and poured himself a third before returning to the table.

"It didn't grow for years upon years," Methos said. Many of his memories had melted into time, but this remained. "I was lucky. My teacher found me and kept me with him." The tent on the forest's edge. He'd learned to walk with a crutch, hippety-hop, and he gathered the fruits of the forest while his teacher hunted.

"How old were you?" Joe asked.

"I can't remember. Young." He had no way of telling the time. Seasons changed--at the time, he had counted them, marked them all down on scraps of hide, but he'd lost that journal millennia ago. "There were so few people, then. You only had large numbers in Mesopotamia. We lived apart from the richest areas where the game ran thick, so we saw people only rarely, and Immortals never."

Until.

"Until one day one of my teacher's older students came looking for him, and found me," Methos said. He ran his thumb over the cool glass in his hands, trying to remember what the man had looked like. "He said, 'Look. My teacher left me a feenyeh.'"

Methos glanced at Joe and translated, "Climbing vine. Only one leg on the ground, right?"

"Right." Joe wasn't writing. Good. This story was just for him.

"So he attacked me. He had an obsidian axe--very, very sharp, but fragile." Methos plucked his knife from the table and wiggled it, demonstrating. "And I had my crutch--a stout thing, wrapped in hard leather--so I wedged myself between two trees and just batted the axe away."

Methos couldn't remember the man's face, but he remembered the terrible anger in him--anger that was fed by his failure to kill Methos. "He was furious that he couldn't cut me down like a weed. He became irrational; he hit me carelessly and broke the blade off his axe, so he came at me with his hands. He tried to strangle me, shouting that damaged things shouldn't live."

"Working out some personal problems?" Joe muttered.

"You'd think that living for centuries would mean people would have time to work through their issues, but some just never do." Methos finished off his drink, hoping those fingers didn't point back at himself. "Anyway, he was strangling me. So I pushed myself away from the tree and fell on him."

Joe snorted.

"Making my weakness into my strength. Sun Tzu was an amateur," Methos said, unable to keep from smiling. "And what do you know--he took the fall hard. And I grabbed the largest piece from his axe and took his head."

Took his head while staring into his eyes. He wished he could remember what he looked like. "And that was my first head. When I revived from the Quickening, I had my leg again."

"Huh." Joe leaned back in his chair. "That always work?"

Methos shrugged. "I have a strong Quickening."

"Does Raines?"

He remembered the flicker of Presence under his woodpile, the tiny sparks that rose when Methos stretched his Quickening out. Alexei had always been a guttering flame. "I wish he did."

Cory ate all his omelet and half Duncan's and then fell back asleep. Duncan stretched out beside him again, rereading "Dead Souls."

Cory didn't snore. He didn't snuggle closer, wrapping his legs around Duncan's; he didn't smile in his sleep. Instead he twitched--fingers, legs, eyebrows, mouth. Sometimes just his index finger. His trigger finger.

Cory's other arm rested on the couch at the foot of the bed. His bag, complete with submachine gun, rested by the door.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Last time Cory came around, he rigged a car to explode in the middle of a street; if Duncan hadn't been there, it would have exploded in the middle of a parade. Cory had had no intention of disarming it or driving it away, even after his plan was spoiled. If he was up to even worse things now...

But he was tired of the weight of responsibility, and while he didn't love Cory-- or like him really--they had a history together. There was affection. Plus Amanda liked him, and Methos... Methos had held the man in his arms last night and whispered soft things in Russian to him as he slept. Less like a lover than a mother.

He should let it lie--but he had to know.

Duncan sighed, stuck a bookmark in his book and picked up the phone to call Joe.

"It isn't!"

"Is," Methos said, grinning.

"You're not sitting there telling me that polyester is the greatest invention of the millennium!"

Methos started laughing. "Well, here I am, sitting down, assuring you that it's an invention the like of which the world has never seen!"

"You are such a liar." The phone rang and Joe pushed himself up from the table. Methos bounced up out of his chair and dashed to the phone before Joe could reach it. He held Joe at arm's length.

"Hey!"

"Joe's House of Pies, pies fresh daily, how may I serve you?" Methos burbled.

"Very funny, Adam. Let me talk to Joe."

"That'll be a banana cream?" Methos pushed Joe away. Joe whacked Methos' kneecap with his cane. "Ow! Bloody hell, Joe, here you are."

Joe took the phone and thumped Methos once more for good measure. "Hello?--Yeah, he's drunk as a skunk."

Joe listened, sighed and eyed Methos. "We haven't been able to keep a Watcher on Cory Raines since 1931. I think you'd better talk to the old man after all. He knows more than I do about this guy." He handed the phone back to Methos. "He wants the daily special."

"MacLeod! How's our mutual friend?"

"Exhausted. Sleeping. What exactly do you know?"

"There's a submachine gun in his bag and a military-issue handgun in his jacket pocket--and that's Russian military, not American. He doesn't carry a sword--he's shy about taking heads. He'll steal our wallets given half a chance, though. He likes good wine and tough women and snores like a camel. Given what I know of his movements and what I read in the papers, I think he was shot in the parking garage of the FBI building a few weeks ago. What else do you want?"

MacLeod sighed, creating static. "What the hell does he do for a living? Why is he getting shot up? Why FBI? And how do you know him?"

"Except for the last, I have no idea--and I'd rather talk about that last in person. I'll be there in fifteen minutes." Methos hung up. "See you around, Joe."

"I'm driving. You're drunk," Joe said, grabbing Methos' arm.

"In five minutes, I won't be. You know that."

"Okay! So I'm dying of curiosity."

"They have a pill for that," Methos said, but Joe was already turning out the lights.

Duncan looked down and Cory's eyes were open. "Er," Duncan said.

"I want to know too, Mac. And Grandfather has all the moves." Cory closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead against Duncan's thigh. He smiled suddenly and slipped his hand underneath. "Mackie boy. We're alone..." he purred.

"You're injured."

Cory slid his hand up to Duncan's crotch, grinning like the devil himself. "Not that badly."

Flash of memory--involving Cory's mouth, and--oh, Lord. He jumped off the bed. "People are coming over! Soon!"

"Grandfather won't mind..." Cory's smile faded into weariness as he sat up. "The arm bothers you."

Duncan glanced at the prosthetic, sitting on the couch like a serial killer's trophy. "No, that's not it."

"I know--we're not supposed to change, we're not supposed to be hurt--I know I'm not all here, Mac, but..." His body hung between his hand and his hips, as if it were too heavy for him. The sweater he'd borrowed from Duncan folded snakelike at the elbow. "Shit," he whispered, "I just think a blow job would make me feel better."

"I have Blue Mountain coffee," Duncan said. "Pretty much the same thing."

Cory looked up. Duncan plucked the bag from the shelf and shook it invitingly, and Cory laughed.

"Methos, you're making the guy in the next car nervous," Joe said. "Settle down before we both get arrested."

Methos forced his hands to relax and turned a giant grin on Joe.

"Now you're making me nervous. Cut that out!"

The light changed and Methos roared through the intersection. "All right, I'm nervous," he said, a few blocks down. "It's never gone particularly well when my students come back to visit."

"You mean Byron?"

Dammit, dammit, slipped. "Yeah." Methos braked for the next light and wished he could brake the conversation as easily.

But he'd taken an oath in his heart to tell the truth to Joe for the next ten years, to make up for the first ten of appalling lies. Joe had forgiven him so readily--he'd thought he was past guilt, but apparently, he wasn't.

"And Kronos," Methos said.

"...Oh." They'd never spoken of Kronos. Joe looked out the window, obviously troubled. The man never did have much of a poker face. "Your students... they don't have the best track record as far as murder and mayhem goes."

"You don't know the half of it. You never even met Glaba. There was a woman who knew her way around an atlatl, let me tell you." Methos took a left.

"How long ago was this?"

"I met Kronos more than two thousand years before the birth of Christ. Glaba was my student centuries before he was even born. Dinosaurs were still walking the earth. I had the most cunning little pterodactyl," Methos said, and forced a smile. "I know you're writing all this down, Joe."

"Most of it. It's my historian's instinct." Joe looked him in the eye. "You mind?"

"If one day you wake up and find your computer wiped and all your notes gone, then you'll know that I minded." Methos pulled into a parking space near MacLeod's barge. There was a man standing on the bridge watching the barge--another of Joe's helpers, probably; looked like Bernard, from the shoulders.

"Or you could just ask," Joe said, shooting Methos a look.

Methos laughed. "Oh come on, Joe, I think more of your historian's instinct than that." Joe shook his head. Methos got out of the car, then stuck his head back in. "And don't call me you-know-what in front of Alexei. He doesn't know."

"Thought you said he was shy about taking heads."

"Tell that to the real Cory Raines." Methos looked at the barge, squared his shoulders, and shivered as the Presence of the two Immortals touched him.

Duncan felt the Presence and opened the door. He called out, "Joe, you didn't let him drive, did you?"

Joe shrugged. "What can I say? He's armed."

"I sober up fast." Methos strolled up the gangplank and past Duncan. "How's my boy?"

Joe raised an eyebrow as he came up the gangplank. Duncan shrugged--what did he know about Methos? His past, his students, anything. He was just rolling with the punches and hoping the worst had already come.

Cory was standing by the window at the other end of the barge. He was pale as a ghost and shaking slightly despite the thick sweater. "Dyedushka. I feel terrible." He looked up at Methos and Duncan, and past them to Joe in the doorway. "Who's this?"

"A friend," Methos said.

Cory's eyes darted between the three men, wild and wary. "He looks like a Watcher."

"Good eye." Methos slumped into the couch, beckoning Cory to sit beside him.

"Hey!" Joe said. "You're not supposed to know about us."

"But you're so obvious--you stick out like a sore thumb when you know how to look. I remember in--" Cory stopped short. "In--I don't know. Jesus." Cory pressed his hand to his forehead. The exit wound in his hair glittered in the gray light from the window.

"Don't worry about it." Duncan touched Cory's empty shoulder and he flinched into the shelves.

"There's something important," Cory muttered, clenching his hand into his hair. "Why I came. Something."

It wasn't his arm--he'd seen enough war, God knew--but the shredding of his mind that gave Duncan the shivers. He could only hope it would never be him. "You'll be fine. You're Immortal; you'll heal. That's what we do."

Cory shook all over. His shoulders straightened and he shoved the blunt knob of his arm into Duncan's chest. "I'm not healing," he breathed.

Methos cleared his throat. Cory and Duncan both looked at him; Cory stepped back against the window. "I won't lie and say you're strong, Alexei, because we both know you're not. But you're functional and you're alive and there's no reason you shouldn't stay alive as long as you keep your head."

Emotion flickered across Cory's face: pride, pain, bone-deep fear. Love. Methos gestured and Cory folded onto the couch and into his arms. "Everything will be all right," Methos said.

Duncan let his breath out. He and Joe settled into chairs at the table. Methos cradled Cory's head on his shoulder. "You left a message on my London service a few weeks ago. You said I had family trouble, and that time was short but you would see me soon."

"Bells are failing to ring," Cory said. His voice was tight, but Duncan could see his body relaxing into Methos'.

It made sense when he thought about it. Methos taught Cory to be amoral, to be tricky. Duncan had never seen Cory fight with a sword, but he was easy with guns just as Methos was. Did he also teach him to be charming, or did that come from each man himself?

Duncan folded his hands and watched them. "Family trouble?" Joe said. "Mafia or another student? Or do you have a wife tucked away that you haven't told me about?"

Methos shook his head. "None you don't know about. I've never been a mobster. And family trouble sounds like a student, except for the little kink that all my students but Alexei are dead." He ruffled Cory's hair as he looked down into his face.

Cory's face fell even bleaker, emptier. "Krishna? Isabella? The Moor? All of them?"

Methos closed his eyes, resting his cheek on the top of Cory's head. "Isabella lost her head to a hunter in Spain not long after you met her. Krishna died in Shanghai in a fair and honorable fight." Methos pulled Cory closer and continued, "Batutai died in St. Petersburg, drunk as a lord. Rachel and Peter were hunted down by Bloody William, and Rachel very nearly beat him. Thorfinn... died in Greenland, in the snows. Glaba died in battle. Silas died by my own hand, because it became necessary."

A tiny shiver ran over Cory at the last, but he didn't pull away. "And Kronos and Caspian and Byron and the Moor were killed one by one by MacLeod, not so very long ago," Methos continued. He opened his eyes, looking at Duncan. "Don't cry for them. They dug their own graves."

Duncan met Methos' eyes, feeling ill.

"Isabella slipped cyanide into my wine that last night. If you hadn't come along, I would never have seen Paris," Cory said. "I'm shocked, not sad, Dyedushka. I didn't think they could die."

"Every life has an end."

"The Moor was Xavier St. Cloud," Duncan said. He felt like he should have been more surprised than he was.

"Yes. Isabella was his wife. They were both my students." Methos was still as a statue, watching Duncan.

"And Caspian. I guessed--I didn't guess Caspian." Methos had compared him to a rabid dog, the one time Duncan had gotten him to speak of the Horsemen. Methos despised Caspian.

Methos stirred, wrinkling his nose. "He developed some nasty habits as he grew older. But it was me who pulled him out of the river and me who taught him to use a sword."

Joe looked stricken. He leaned forward on his cane. "And Rachel of Lisbon."

"Yes, Joe."

Joe gestured, nearly falling out of his chair. "The woman who killed fifty Watchers in one week? Who took the head of Moran Kingslayer? Who stole the Empress Theodora's jewels right off her neck? She was your student?"

"Yes!" Methos snapped, shoving Cory against the arm of the couch. "I just said it, didn't I? And I helped Bloody William hunt her down after she killed you lot, so cut me some damned slack."

"Then you're Theodore the Wanderer--and I would have owed Don Salzer ten bucks. Damn." Joe shook his head.

"Don got very close an awful lot. If I hadn't been there steering him clear, you might have a complete Methos Chronicle by now."

Joe shook his head. "Bastard," he said, not bitterly.

Methos raised an eyebrow at him. He settled back, pulling dazed-looking Cory back into his arms. "Child of the earth and sky, just like the rest of us. The only family we have is that we make... What do you think you meant, Alexei?"

Cory shook his head slightly against Methos' neck.

"Poor lambs," Methos said.

"When did that woman kill all those Watchers?" Duncan asked suddenly. Caviar and silk danced behind his eyes: Xavier's ghost. He could feel that oily voice inside his head.

Joe raised an eyebrow and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "604 AD. The Constantinople bureau was completely wiped out; it took years to rebuild. Rachel of Lisbon, she's kind of a legend."

"Or a nightmare. Amazing woman. One of my best students."

"Yeah, so--a notorious thief..." Joe indicated Cory, "and a bunch of bandits, and whatever the hell Xavier St. Cloud was--"

"A murderer," Duncan said.

"Yes?" Methos said.

Joe glanced from Duncan back to Methos. "Do you have one single student who isn't a criminal?"

"Glaba--no, I tell a lie, she was a notorious cattle raider." Methos smiled slightly against Cory's hair. "What can I say? I have such gifted children."

Gifted children. Duncan dropped his hands into his lap. "There's nothing you can say," he said quietly, "so let's move on."

The smile drained from Methos' face.

"I think I--" Cory suddenly doubled over in pain. Methos curled around him, rocking him.

Looked like a long day ahead. Duncan stood up. "I'll put some more coffee on."

Methos leaned on the rail and admired the lights of the city glimmering through the midday fog. He thought about bolting--just driving away, he could do it--but if he ran, MacLeod would have to chase him, and he'd had enough of that.

The solitary, unmoving Watcher still stood on the bridge.

The front door of the barge opened and MacLeod stepped out onto the deck. "Joe is grilling Cory about our bank robberies back in the day. Apparently, we lost our Watchers to a flat tire somewhere near Portland."

Methos smiled at the water. He grasped the rail with both hands, telling his nerves to settle. "They should have done that ages ago--shown themselves, I mean, and got the stories straight from the horse's mouth. The organization could do with a deal less secrecy sometimes."

"Funny. I thought you were in favor of secrets," MacLeod said. There was a definite edge in his voice.

"Is there a problem, Mac?" Nothing to do but stand and face him and know. Methos let his sweater sleeves fall over his hands and put on his best harmless look. His hand was one twitch away from his gun.

"Do you think it's funny when your student kills fifty people on cold blood?" MacLeod leaned on the rail beside Methos, blocking the easiest exit with his body.

Methos shook his head. "One of them attacked her. She decided, quite reasonably, that I was wrong, that they weren't harmless after all, and she took action."

"They were innocent."

"She had no way of knowing that. Look, MacLeod, it's right there in the oath. I've taken it. Everyone knows what they're getting into when they start following armed, paranoid people around for a living."

"So it's a laugh riot, right?"

"Long faces don't suit me." Methos cut his eyes at MacLeod. Mac was glowering--damn, damn, he'd played this wrong again. "What do you want from me?"

MacLeod was like stone--like a churchyard gargoyle, a sin-eater facing down the demons. "I want some sign that you know what you did was wrong."

Methos barked out a laugh. "You're not going to get it. I taught my students to be strong and clever and above all, to live. And they did live--they had long, full lives, most of them. That's all I owed to them. That's all I did."

"What about what you owe to society?"

"What do I owe to society?"

"Not to turn... murderers loose in their midst," MacLeod said, gesturing at the veiled city.

"You were about to say 'trained killers,' weren't you?" Methos tilted his head. MacLeod looked down. "And which society do you mean?"

"Human society. It's not fair when one of us turns on them, Methos."

"Fair!" He laughed up at the skies. "Heavens, rain down!" he called out in ancient Greek. "A child wants you to be fair!"

MacLeod looked at him unhappily. Methos wasn't sure how much of that he'd understood, but the gist was probably clear. "Stop it," MacLeod said. "You know what I'm saying."

"No, I don't! You still haven't told me what you want of me."

MacLeod grabbed his sleeve. "I want you to show a conscience!"

"I do!" Methos shrugged him off. "It's just not your conscience!"

"Things haven't changed that much--Xavier St. Cloud killed randomly, for profit; he hunted me using mortals, and you taught him that!"

"I know what Xavier did--but I was his teacher eight hundred years ago. It's not like programming a computer. You don't get to control what goes through their minds. He tried to kill me with his dirty tricks as well." Methos sighed. "If only they came with an off switch," he said, and looked back up at the skies.

"And Kronos?"

"That was different. We've settled this, MacLeod."

"We've settled nothing."

Methos shook his head, slowly. "You can't imagine how different things were. Everything's changed. The stars have changed. Look, when I was a boy, there were two constellations; east and west, the Warriors," he said, holding up his hands. "One set as the other rose. They chased each other across the sky endlessly. The Spearman and the Archer."

"Never heard that one before," MacLeod said.

"Nobody knows it any more."

"And you don't remember anything before your first head..."

"Well, no. But I do remember my teacher telling this to someone else. And hush, MacLeod; you wanted wisdom, here it is." Methos raised an eyebrow at MacLeod, but he was still looking up and couldn't appreciate it. "The long spear is an intimate weapon. You have to let your quarry get right up close and personal before you can use it. The bow is a distance weapon, useless up close. Keep the right distance and neither weapon is useful against the opponent--so the Warriors chase each other, trying to close the distance, forever."

"This is crap; you're making it up," MacLeod said.

Methos shifted. Bright boy. "I'm not! But you're right, they were rubbish constellations. Pretty abstract. Lots of stars left over." Methos took his weight off the rail and stuck his hands into his deep, loose pockets. "And the whole thing is a bit old fashioned, don't you think? Nowadays, it would be the sword and the gun," and MacLeod was fast but Methos was faster. MacLeod's hand was clamped around Methos' wrist but Methos' gun dug firmly into the soft underside of MacLeod's chin. Methos stood between his legs, pressing him to the rail.

"I don't know about you," MacLeod said, holding Methos' eyes, "but I feel pretty up close and personal."

"Metaphor was never my strong point." Methos pushed MacLeod's chin up. "Here's a better one: the strong man and the canny man. The strong man wins in a fair fight, but the canny man makes sure the fight is never fair."

"So what will you do to uneven this fight, Methos?" MacLeod's voice was husky and dark. Methos could feel him testing his weight, looking for his next move.

"We're not fighting. We're talking about the stars."

MacLeod gave him a searching look, eyes full of questions and pain.

"Hypothetically," Methos said, "hypothetically, it would hurt like hell, but I'd start by killing Joe." Methos stopped, waiting for a reaction, but MacLeod said nothing; he just swallowed, looking bleak.

MacLeod could turn on his friends in an instant once he saw who they really were. Methos envied him the ability. How different would his life have been if he had walked away from Kronos?

"But we're talking about the stars," Methos said. He didn't want MacLeod as his enemy. Apart from the fact that he'd probably lose, he loved the bastard. "One more time. What do you want from me?"

Methos heard voices echoing off the water. MacLeod glanced over Methos' shoulder and growled, "I want you to put that gun down before they call the police."

He didn't look; he slipped the gun back into his pocket. MacLeod shoved him away and stalked back to the door.

("I wish you hadn't seen that.")

Alex watched the two men come through the door--Mac first, fast and angry as a stormcloud, and then Grandfather, quiet as a church. ("You should call me Afanasii in public, not Grandfather.") They hadn't gone out of the range of their Presence; it was killing him ("Sweep as we fly") feeling those powerful auras all the time, like needles under his skin, but he didn't know what else to do.

He watched Mac ( "I am not digging you back up again!") and thought of hot summer nights in cheap rooming houses, ("a room for me and my sister and her husband--oh, just one room will do") him and Amanda curled up on either side of Mac, distracting him whenever he complained about their plans. ("Mac is pouting. Make him stop.")

"And?" Joe prompted.

He couldn't remember what he was saying. ("And five and five--I lost count.") Something about the old days, the bank-robbing? "It... was a lot of fun," Alex told Joe. "After the Great War, everyone just wanted to have a good time. We had the best."

Joe leaned in closer. "You were saying how you kept Mac interested. He's always been up for a caper, but never made a living out of it before."

"Joe..." Mac said, sounding dangerous. ("Cory...")

"Oh--yeah, well that was easy." ("Stop pouting, Mackie boy, you love this--and us.") Alex nudged Joe with his shoulder and grinned. "Did it the old-fashioned way, Joe my friend. Amanda and I have a lot in common."

"Cory!" Mac bellowed. ("No, I hate you!")

The tone of Mac's voice, it reminded him-- ("Hi, I'm Alex--")

("You killed my--") Pain, bright and explosive. He could feel his mind battling itself, neurons clashing against each other as they regenerated one by one. He smelled cinnamon and coal smoke and blood in quick succession. ("Stoke the fire.")

But nobody else saw. Grandfather was leaning in the doorway, watching Mac. Mac was looming over Joe. "Well, that's one for the Chronicles," Joe said, jotting down notes.

"My personal life is none of your business!" Mac grabbed for the notebook, but Joe stuck it behind his back.

"Actually, it's exactly my business!" Joe closed the notebook and tucked it away in his pocket.

("Two guards on the doors, lasers in the hall, and the glass is alarmed.") Alex rubbed away the pain with his trembling hand and summoned up one of Cory's grins. "Come on, Mackie boy, nothing to be ashamed of. I'm a pretty choice cut." Mac gave him a disgusted look. Grandfather smiled serenely from the door. ("There's a new land there, across the water.")

Hard to remember his teacher's name was Adam now. Last time, it had been Benjamin; before that, Afanasii and Vladimir, and the first time ("but I have no family"), the very first time, when he woke up on the warm stone hearth with the taste of death still in his mouth, what had he whispered? ("apples for sale! Lovely apples") ...his memories were faded. ("I am your grandfather now.") Not jagged and broken, like the recent past, but melted into time. He remembered the streets of Moscow ("stop! Thief!"), the smell and the animals and the warm nook behind a gaily painted ("take this bread and go with God") church where he'd slept ("this is MY place"), but he couldn't remember people, or dates, or what he had done.

("We all have a life in our hands.")

Hard to remember what it was like to be in love with Mac. He knew he had been--thought he had been--but it was all so far away.

His Cory smile faded. He had a hard time holding onto Cory. ("It's a formal challenge, kid. Put up your dukes.") He wondered if the gunshot had finally gotten rid of him.

Maybe he was never in love with Mac. There was--want, he remembered the want. Still felt that. Or--thought he felt it. He jerked back to himself as Grandfather touched his face; Grandfather was kneeling before him. "I thought we might try something to jog your memory," Grandfather said.

"What?" He was confused, looking at Grandfather's face. Grandfather should have a long beard like smoke down his chest, but instead he was thin and young. What had happened?

Grandfather reached out and touched Alex's heart. A spark jumped through the weave of the sweater, bringing a flash of memory--("I change you. I teach you. You become a part of me, and me a part of you.")--and Alex leaped backwards over the couch. "No!"

"What, what are you proposing?" Mac asked, grabbing Grandfather's shoulder.

"A little jump-start," Grandfather said.

"You'll kill me!" Alex shouted. "You're not doing it!" Once, twice, three times--("Boy! You are MINE!")--the Quickenings had taken him over, the people wouldn't let him go--he didn't want to be Grandfather, he didn't want to be someone else, not again, not again. ("Where did you learn to dance like that?")

Grandfather spread his hands--looking not like his Grandfather, looking like a stranger as he had for so long. ("It's so good to see you again, darling boy.") Alex shook his head, losing his thoughts again. "Up to you, Alexei. I was going to give him part of my Quickening, MacLeod. It helps speed healing."

"You can't do that!" Oh, Mac was so quick to disbelieve, but Grandfather was a sorcerer, Grandfather had powers. Alex clung to the back of the couch, knowing that it wouldn't help if Grandfather wanted to destroy him. Grandfather had the Evil Eye and--no, that was just superstition. Alex clawed at his head.

He knew the difference between stories and reality. He knew the present from the past. He did.

"My teacher did it for me when I needed some strength. It's not hard, not really, but if Alexei doesn't want to do it, then we won't..." Grandfather flipped a chair around and straddled the back. A young man, just as he always was, even when he looked old. And an old man, just as he also was, all at the same time--"Settle down, darling boy," Grandfather said. ("Put the gun DOWN!")

("You're under arrest.") Alex's head swam. ("He was going to shoot you!") He looked up at Mac, standing beside the couch, and Joe, looking back at him, and Grandfather, Benjamin, Adam, Vladimir his teacher who he trusted--but he couldn't--couldn't trust, couldn't something, because there was danger--

("BROTHER--") Pain lanced through his head. He collapsed.

Faces behind his eyes--

The taste of oil in his mouth--

The flash of a gun--

Two men, men that he'd seen in his dreams.

("trust me trust me trust me")

Two men. He opened his eyes.

("trust me")

He was on the bed again. Mac stood over him. "Cory!"

("trust me")

"Alex," he whispered. "Call me Alex. I'm not Cory any more."

("trust me")

"Alex." Mac's hand was warm and comforting in his hair.

("trust me")

He screwed his eyes shut against the pain. "Mac. I have to tell--" No. Wrong man. Wrong message.

("trust me")

"You already told us. You'll be fine," Mac said softly, stroking his cheek, making Alex feel so good. They made you feel good before they stuck the knife in. They--someone did, but not Mac. Not Mac. "We'll figure it out. Right, Adam?"

("trust me")

"Absolutely," Grandfather said. Not him. Not Mac. Not... He was confused again, and so tired.

("kill it.")

Joe went home to check the computers and see if anyone had seen Cory recently. Cory was dozing again, worn out with the pain.

Methos slumped across the couch. Duncan sat in a chair across from him.

Methos watched him silently and Duncan stared back in return.

He didn't expect Methos to think exactly as he did, but he did expect him to do the right thing in the end. There had to be something you could do when your students went rogue; you could challenge them, you could--

You could help a hunter track them down. Which Methos did.

Methos' stomach growled; his mouth quirked in response.

Duncan opened his mouth to see what would come out. "I suppose you'll be wanting lunch," he said.

"Oh, dear. My wife Maria used to get that tone when she was angry with me."

Duncan jumped up and headed for the kitchen area. "I'm not angry. And we're not married, Methos. We're not even sleeping together."

"When she got that tone, she'd stab me just to watch me die. I should never have told her I was Immortal," Methos laughed. "And we are sleeping together."

"Because you're too good for the couch, so you come invade my bed!" Duncan broke a baguette in half and slammed it down on a plate. Fine; maybe he was a little angry.

"In the old days, a bed like that slept six." Duncan heard Methos slide off the couch and walk into the kitchen. Methos took the kettle from the counter and filled it with water.

Duncan pulled jam and cheese from the refrigerator. "These days, it sleeps a select party of myself and whoever I happen to be involved with."

"Hm. Experience suggests otherwise." Methos turned on the stove.

Duncan put the bread, jam and cheese on a tray. "Here's lunch," he growled. "God, you're a pain in the ass."

Methos smirked. "I'm fighting the temptation to make a rather crude joke..."

"Well you're too late, Cory made it already! Two peas in a criminal, unfunny pod."

Methos shot him an indignant look over the kettle. "I'm not a criminal! I've never been caught!"

Duncan rolled his eyes.

"I'm a pain in the ass above and beyond my moral failings, is that right? Or is it all of a piece?" Methos looked through the cupboard where Duncan kept his tea.

Duncan sliced the bread. "You were a pain in the ass long before I knew of your dubious morality. You were a pain in Joe's ass from the moment you put him in the position of knowing the Watchers had been infiltrated by an Immortal."

"Ah ah ah, you put him in that position, not me. You didn't have to tell him."

"He's my friend! I had to let him know I found the Holy Grail of Immortals."

"Hm. Yeah. It's one of the high points of his life, you know. He got drunk once and told me." Methos gave Duncan a little smile.

Duncan touched his arm--just a light touch, just enough to catch his attention. His words were all wrong, so he tried to let his body speak: that he wasn't that angry, that Methos was a dear friend, that he remembered all the times they had fought together. That he didn't want to kill him. That he wanted this to calm down. "Why did you hunt down Rachel of Lisbon?"

"She stole my favorite horse?" Methos looked at him through his eyelashes. "No, it was self-preservation. There have always been people like Horton in the Watchers; I was a Watcher then, too, so I saw them all the time. After the massacre, they became more vocal. They were on the verge of open warfare with Immortals. So to save my own skin, I found the infamous headhunter Bloody William, and helped him hunt down Rachel."

"I've never heard of him."

"No reason you would have. He died around 670 AD. In his own lifetime, however, he was famous for exactly the same reasons you are: he was an excellent fighter with a rock-solid set of ethics that he expected the world to adhere to. So we found her, he challenged her, he killed her, I made my report, and the Watchers settled down again. Crisis averted." Methos shrugged.

"Simple," Duncan said.

"I'm a straightforward man."

"Oh, like hell." Duncan prodded his chest. "Nobody finds you if you don't want them to, Methos. If you were really scared, you would have hightailed it out of Europe and spent some quality time on a desert island somewhere. No, you stayed and chose sides in the war because you knew which side you wanted to win."

"There's only two sides in a war, MacLeod: people who live and people who die. I didn't want there to be a war at all."

But Duncan had seen through him. He smiled, gripping Methos' arm.

"Does that smile mean you're not going to kill me?" Methos asked.

"Yup."

Methos lounged back against the countertop, brushing his hand over Duncan's lightly as he crossed his arms. "Well, thank goodness for that. I still haven't seen 'The Godfather' all the way through, and that would just bug the hell out of me."

The kettle whistled and Methos broke away to grab it.

Perhaps they were friends, then. Nothing like a story of good, evil and redemption to warm the Highlander's heart. Methos swirled hot water around the teapot and dumped it out. "I would have told Joe eventually," he told MacLeod as he measured the tea leaves into the pot. "I was planning to disappear in another few years, when people realized I wasn't getting old enough, and I would have left him a letter or something."

"How many people have you told? That's you're Methos, I mean?"

"That's not a simple question." He poured the water over the leaves. "There were always legends, with someone or another's name attached; that name wasn't Methos until a thousand years ago or so. Before that, it was that hermit Darius killed at the gates of Paris. Before that, it was my teacher under a different name. The legends were always ancient. Even my teacher didn't know where they came from."

MacLeod gave him a terribly curious look and carried the tray to the coffee table. "What was your teacher's name?"

His teacher was the first clear memory he had: his teacher standing beside a campfire on the open plains that would one day be Paris, and himself galloping up and pulling short to scare him. He was the only one who remembered his teacher's warm brown eyes and rock-hewn face and the only one who knew the way he enveloped Methos' body when he hugged him.

To Methos, his name was "Father," but he would rather hand MacLeod his heart impaled on a swizzle stick than tell him that. "Why do you want to know? I guarantee you've never heard of him," Methos said as he poured the tea. He sat and handed MacLeod a cup.

"I'm curious. You always say I never ask you things. I'm asking."

"Well. He had many names." Methos swirled the cup before his mouth, feeling the steam against his face and inhaling the rich scent. "The truest one--was Methos. He bequeathed the name to me shortly before he died."

"You must have been close," MacLeod said. Methos looked into his cup and nodded. Closer than teacher and student: son and father. He couldn't remember his childhood, but he felt sure it had been happy. "Do you remember your original name?"

"Yahurum." He closed his eyes--mourning his teacher, just for a second, and trying to remember the child he had been. "But that hasn't been me in a very long time."

MacLeod passed him a slice of bread spread with soft cheese. "My teacher told me to take the name and take his head," Methos said. "He was older than I am now. He said the animals, the earth, and even the stars had all changed within his memory. He said that people were starting to change as well and he was just too old to change with them."

"How old was he?"

"He remembered when the glaciers covered Europe. He hunted mammoths when he was young. He thought agriculture was a bad move and cities were a disturbing new fad. Years? I don't know. But he was very, very old."

MacLeod chewed his bread, looking pensive. Methos ate his piece in three bites and spread another with jam. "Personally," he said, "I enjoy cities. Plumbing is a marvelous thing."

"I wonder if electricity was a mistake, though," MacLeod said. He sipped his tea, raising his eyebrows at Methos.

Methos shook his head. "Stirrups. Stirrups were the mistake."

Alexei turned over noisily and muttered something. Methos glanced over his shoulder. MacLeod raised his hand in a quelling motion and turned his ear toward the bed.

"Agent Mulder," Alexei whispered, "Mulder, it's important..."

Methos frowned.

"Brother," Alexei whispered, sending an automatic shiver down Methos' spine. Alexei's face creased with pain.

Methos grabbed his bag with his laptop from its place beside MacLeod's desk. "He said a name," MacLeod said.

"I heard." Methos turned on the computer.

Little whirs and beeps, completely artificial, and behind him he could hear Alexei breathing. He understood now what his teacher had told him about the cities--that he couldn't comprehend the artifice and the familiar humanity together; that it was too alien. He'd heard Alexei breathing in his ear on dozens of frigid winter nights. It was a sound that should go with the pop of the fire and soft rhythm of horse's hooves on the street below, and to hear it mixed with the sound of plastic and metal grinding was strange. Vertiginous.

He was feeling his age.

Honestly, stirrups had been revolutionary enough.

"I know who he is," Methos said.

Duncan leaned over Methos' shoulder, peering at the little screen. Methos typed "Mulder FBI" into a search engine and the screen filled with aliens, Bigfoot, and creatures living in American sewers. "He's a believer," Methos said.

"Believer in what?"

"Everything." Methos paged forward, revealing articles on killer fungus, zombies, and yet more aliens. "A man who believes in these things can believe in Immortals."

"You said Cory was shot by the FBI? This guy?"

Methos made a face. "Someone looking for the hidden mysteries of the universe doesn't usually go around shooting them in the head. Here, look at this. It's how I know about Alex. They report on all the really strange stuff that goes on, and they're especially good at Washington-area incidents." He cleared the address bar and typed in "lonegunmen.com."

A site popped up trumpeting "ALIENS AMONG US." "Serious journalists, I see. You said you read it in the papers," Duncan said.

"A man born in 1592 really has no room to throw stones at the seekers of the world. And they do have a paper version." Methos typed "Immortals" into the search engine of the site and hit enter. After a brief pause, it took them to an article on "Immortals Among Us."

"Creative headlines, too."

"Read the article," Methos said, turning the computer to face him.

Duncan wrinkled his nose and read out loud. "New evidence, proof of a race of Immortals living among the people of every city in every nation... swordfights and electrical storms, fast healing, hundreds or even thousands of years old... okay, so their information is good." Good enough to send his stomach through the floor. Just thinking about the fact that anyone could click around and read that made him want to take a sword to the damned thing.

"Their information is damn near impeccable on this count. Funny, isn't it? This is out here for the world to read, and it only conceals us more effectively." Methos grinned at him.

"You think?" He swallowed and pushed the computer away.

"It's the Age of Disinformation. You read everything and you believe nothing. Just showing up on a site like this is enough to convince people we don't exist," Methos said.

"I still don't like it."

"...don't like it?" Alex's voice was exhausted. He was awake.

Duncan knelt up and stroked his forehead. "Alex. How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been dead for a week..." He looked almost green--worse than he had when he showed up. Pain showed all over his face and in the lines of his body as he curled up on the bed.

"You're sounding clearer, darling boy. I have some morphine if you need it," Methos volunteered.

"I hate drugs," Alex whispered. He grabbed Methos' sweater with his single hand. "Dyedushka, we have to leave." Tremors shivered up the taut fabric to Methos' neck.

"And go where?" Methos asked, leaning in closer.

Alex's fist tightened. His eyes were wide and fever-bright. "He's coming from the ends of the earth. We have to go to the other end."

"Well, unfortunately, the earth is round..." Methos covered Alex's hand and raised his eyebrows at Duncan. Duncan shook his head. He didn't even know where to begin.

The phone rang and Alex cried out. Duncan leapt up to answer it. "MacLeod here."

"It's Joe. I found our boy."

"Where? And when?"

"Washington D.C., three weeks ago. The Watcher for Andrew Marine--a newbie, nobody you need to worry about--reported that his Immortal approached another Immortal with a challenge, but that the other Immortal refused the challenge and shot Marine instead. He didn't take the head, he just left. Now, the Watcher was pretty close to them, and he gave a description: six foot, strong build, short brown hair, and his left hand in his pocket at all times, even when Marine threw a punch. Sounds like a one-armed man to me."

"Yeah, sounds like Cory." He turned to the bed. "You were spotted in Washington D.C. three weeks ago."

Methos was kneeling awkwardly beside the bed. The top of Alex's head was pressed to Methos' chest. "I wasn't dreaming..." Alex beat his head against Methos' body. Beating some sense into himself, maybe.

"No. You were shot in the FBI building," Methos said.

"How do you know?" Duncan asked.

"I read about it in the Lone Gunmen. Alex, do you remember who Mulder is?"

Alex showed his teeth: pain, anger or both.

"Agent Mulder," Methos prompted. "You said his name in your sleep."

He ground his jaw. "I know him. I know I know him. I don't know how."

"It was definitely him. I'll call you back," Duncan told Joe. He hung up. "What now?" he asked Methos. "You're the sneaky one."

Methos looked down for a moment, then up with new excitement on his face. "Do you have any favors to call in with Amanda?"

Duncan snorted. "Only about a hundred..."

Oh, she could not believe this.

"You want me to spy on a government agent? Are you nuts?" Amanda glared out the window in the general direction of France. Sure, the Atlantic was in the way, but it was the thought that counted. She had an apartment! And money! And a darling downstairs neighbor! She had a life!

"Who better? You're the best!" And Mac was pouring on the flattery, which meant he was going to talk her into this whether she liked it or not, damn him. Sure he was Mr. Straight-And-Narrow--right up until he had some kind of higher purpose.

There was not enough suspicion in the world. "Why? What's going on?"

"We think he knows about Immortals. We know he had some kind of run-in with Cory, and we want to know what's the score."

"Cory!" She laughed. "He's back? What happened, did he get arrested?"

"No. He's here in Paris. He got shot in the head and he's scrambled like an egg."

"That's awful." Amanda touched the chilly glass of the window, trying not to picture herself like that. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Adam says so. Right now, though, I want to know if any of us are in danger."

If Cory was involved... well, there went the money, the apartment, and the downstairs neighbor, but... Cory. He was worth it. Probably. "I'll do it."

"Thanks a million," Mac said before hurriedly hanging up.

Methos could hear Joe through the door: "...yeah, unorthodox, but you can't argue with results." The phone beeped just before Joe answered the door. "What now?"

Methos tried to look winsome. "The boys are arm-wrestling. It's all a bit macho for me. And I brought a present." He held up the small bag.

"Huh." Joe looked from the bag to him. "Learning some manners in your old age?"

"God, I hope not." He followed Joe inside. "You'll want a bowl for this. And a knife. It needn't be sharp."

Joe's apartment, over the bar, was warm and comfortable and completely American. Methos half expected to see American electrical sockets wired into the walls. It almost made him forget where he was; dangerous, that.

Joe crossed the living room to the small kitchen. "Hey, I looked into that Lone Gunmen site."

MacLeod had called Joe with the info as son as they had it. Methos put his feet up on the couch. "They know everything, Joe. You should look into hiring some of these guys."

"If I ever start hunting Bigfoot instead of Immortals, maybe I will."

Methos smiled to himself. "Mama Yeti would adore you, Joe. You're a miniature silverback--such a cute little pet for the cave." Juvenile Yeti were about the same size as a man. Roughhousing with one was rather more dangerous than a vigorous game of rugby. Just as well they were dying out, really. They didn't have any place in the modern world.

"'Scuse me?"

Methos' teacher had laughed his ass off when he rescued him. "Nothing!"

Joe returned from the kitchen with a bowl and a knife. "Yeah, that's what I thought." He set both down, slapped Methos' feet off the couch and settled down next to him. "So what is it?"

"A pomegranate," Methos said, shaking it from the bag. "Fruit of Persephone's downfall."

"Never had one."

"It's pretty simple." Methos cut through the outer skin of the pomegranate. "It's like caviar, only fruit rather than fish. The flesh is encased around the seeds. You scoop them out and eat them."

"And then spend winter in hell, right?" Joe cocked an eyebrow and grinned.

"Paris. Close enough." The seeds burst in his mouth, sweet and tart. He smiled. "Mm. These have been my favorite fruit for as long as I can remember. I used to feed them to all my students before they left me for the first time." Well, almost all. They didn't grow in Sweden--and Kronos was just different.

"Graduation?"

Binding. They shared the fruit and shared his Quickening and from that point, they bore his mark. "Something like that. And I know you're about to say 'and about your students...'" He mimicked Joe--with love, of course.

Joe tipped more seeds into his mouth and cocked the other eyebrow.

"If they weren't all dead, I'd be sure it was one of them." Something tickled the back of his mind--but no, Thorfinn was out of the picture. He'd made sure of that. "They all try to kill me in the end, the little bastards."

"Too tempted by the head of the world's oldest man?"

Methos tore open the skin of the pomegranate. "Exactly. At least I'm safe from Alex, poor boy. Even ordinary Quickenings hit him like the Dark Quickening hit Mac."

"Why take a student when you think it's going to end with swords?"

He remembered the proud slope of Rachel's shoulders as she held up her hand, red with her own heart's blood. "Why marry a woman when I know she's going to die in six months? Some relationships are worth the pain of losing them."

Joe's gravestone would read "A Good Man." Methos offered him the last seed, thinking of Alexa.

It gleamed like a gem between Joe's rough musician's fingers. "You really loved her, didn't you?" Joe said. "Just like that."

Methos nodded. "And I'll love her forever."

"As long as you live. Nothing lasts forever."

"Forever is a relative term. Kronos..." The mention of the name made Joe frown. "He'll be with me for the rest of my life. That's forever," Methos said. Like mistletoe growing on an oak, Kronos was there in his mind. Methos slouched down onto his shoulders and looked at Joe.

"Mac said he took his head."

"He did."

"But..."

"He told you about the double Quickening, right? When he killed Kronos, I killed Silas--"

"Yeah, and there was a connection--" He could see Joe getting it.

"Kronos was nearly as old as I am. We get powerful. We learn things. Even dead, he knew his way home." Methos interlaced his hands on top of his knees. "So here we are, together forever, just the way he always wanted it."

"That's--Jesus. That's rough," Joe said.

"No. Not at all. You don't spend two millennia with someone you don't like, Joe. He was a hard, vicious man, but he was the other half of my soul." He put his hand over his heart. "You can't possibly understand it. Just know it, all right? Kronos is here, in me."

Joe probably thought he was crazy or worse, but only said, "Okay."

They sat side by side as the rain pattered on the roof above them.

"Well, it's not like I could tell MacLeod," Methos said finally.

"I know."

Methos closed his eyes. "Hey, you mind if I spend the night here? It's getting a little crowded over at the barge."

"There's only one bed, and this couch barely big enough for Amy."

"Only one bed at the barge."

"Yeah, well, you're a lot cozier with MacLeod than you are with me," Joe said, with an extra edge to his voice.

"Am not. And I need to work on my American accent."

"Yeah? Lay it on me."

Methos straightened up. "'Hello, I am from St. Louis. I love football and beer.'"

"Wow."

"Not so good, I know."

"That's one funky accent you have." Joe eyed him penetratingly. "I know you're not really Welsh, but..."

"I'm a lot of things. I suppose I can tell people I'm Canadian, then. Sparsely populated country, people known to talk funny, get more respect on the world scene, sounds like a plan!" Methos beamed.

"For Pete's sake." Joe rolled to his feet and picked up the remnants of the pomegranate.

"Hey, do you know the Canadian anthem?"

"I want a cigar," Cory said, rubbing his face.

"Try some meditation. Clear the mind rather than fouling the air." Duncan was doing his best, up on the deck of the barge, but Cory--Alex--by any name, he was hard to ignore.

"I think I'd feel more like myself with a cigar."

Duncan gave up and unfolded his legs. "Sorry. Can't help you." He stretched out, hands on his heels.

Cory froze; they both felt Presence. "Shit," Cory said. "That's not Grandfather."

Duncan rolled to his feet. There was a young Immortal standing at the foot of the gangplank. "Yes?" he called out.

"Which one of you is Duncan MacLeod?" she asked.

"I am. And I'm in no mood for a challenge."

"Oh, I'm not challenging you. I just wanted to see you! You're famous!" She waved. "Nice pecs! Bye!"

She jogged off. Duncan blinked.

"I think you need a cigar," Cory said.

"Shut up."

Duncan stretched out on the deck and counted the stars. Cory folded down beside him. "What's your real name?" Duncan asked. "Your original name."

"Grandfather named me Alexei. Alexei Vladimirov, with the patronymic."

"And before that?"

Cory shook his head. His mouth twitched downwards. "Doesn't matter. Alexei is my real name. Grandfather is my real family."

"I have a cousin," Duncan said. "Connor. He was my teacher."

"It's good to have someone to rely on. We can't always trust each other," Cory said softly.

"Not always, no. But we can be friends." Duncan clasped his knee and Cory smiled. "Provided, that is, you ease off that life of crime."

"You're no fun." Cory grimaced, looking down at the deck. "You realize this is all wet, right? That it's been raining? A lot?"

The damp had already soaked his jeans; now it was infiltrating his shirt as well. "Sure. It's meditative, don't you think? The abnegation of the flesh."

"I think I've had my share of that," Cory said, and sat on Duncan's chest. Duncan shoved him off, Cory shoved back, and they wrestled their way right into the stairwell.

The first thing Amanda found out was that Mulder was an ex FBI agent.

The second thing she found out was that he was independently wealthy, and therefore had plenty of time and money to do the investigation thing anyway. "What I'd do ordinarily," she told Mac over the phone, "is search his office, but it looks like he works out of his home now."

"Give it a week," Mac said. "Be careful."

"I am always careful. I was born careful--don't you make that noise at me!"

"What noise? I didn't make any noise."

"You scoffed."

"I didn't!"

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Let me talk to Cory."

"It's the middle of the night. He's asleep."

"Is he okay?"

"Will be, yeah. Be careful, Amanda."

"I am."

"I mean it. Immortal doesn't mean invulnerable." Mac sounded--worried. Really worried.

Silly boy. "Calm down. I'm a pro. I'll call back when I know something, all right?" She closed the cell phone and stepped into the sporting goods store. Sleeping bag. Camp stove. If she was going to stake Mulder out on a rooftop, she was damn well going to have hot coffee while she did it.

"Have you noticed people watching us?" Alex said.

"Yes, they're called Watchers," Duncan replied, ducking Methos' swing.

Alex sat on a table in the corner cleaning his gun as Duncan and Methos sparred. "But following us?"

"You haven't got a Watcher," Methos said breathlessly, aiming short swings at Duncan's legs. "They kept getting killed or imprisoned, darling boy--you run in dangerous circles. You're just not used to--arrgh!" He fell to his knees, blood pouring from Duncan's cut in his thigh.

Alex flinched as blood flicked off the tip of Duncan's sword across his face. "Guys."

"Just a little bit of blood," Duncan panted. Methos grabbed Duncan's ankle with both hands and pulled him off his feet.

Methos squirmed on top of Duncan and pressed his sword to his neck. "That's six to five, my lad," Methos gasped out, and collapsed like a rag doll.

Duncan pushed the sword away from his neck and let his arms splay out. He felt his artery knit back together--a strange, ticklish feeling. Methos lay limp between his legs and across his chest; Methos' blood soaked through his shirt. "Get off! What have you been eating? You weigh a ton," Duncan said.

"You're doing all the cooking," Methos muttered. "Give me a minute while I make some new blood."

"Humph." Duncan made faces at the ceiling. Methos' body tangled up with his... He felt duller than he should, like a butter knife instead of a katana. Maybe he was tired of being angry.

He'd thought he'd understood Methos after those weird dreams--seeing him with Kronos, seeing him become a modern Horseman--or at least understood that he couldn't understand him, and just accepted what he was: a deep pool full of strange fish.

Strange, carnivorous fish that liked to bite him on the ass when he wasn't looking. He gave Alex a long, hard look.

Damaged and not healing. Hunter. Fighter. Sneak. That much was obvious from the way he moved.

Lover. Philanthropist. Fool. That much he'd seen, in private, in person. Cory stole money--sometimes from entirely the wrong people--and gave it away. Cory kissed Duncan's shoulders and told him about the smiles of orphans when Santa Claus arrived mid-July. Cory drank too much and smiled too much and--Cory was nowhere to be seen in this man holding a gun in the corner of the room.

Him and not him. He'd changed... the same way Duncan had watched Methos change in those strange, strange dreams. He'd become harder, a shadow version of the man Duncan had known.

Cory swam down into dark waters and became Alex. Methos had been Yahurum, and was now Adam. Could you swim out of darkness and back into the light?

Duncan had. So, perhaps, had Methos. So, perhaps, would Alex, given time. "You're looking at me," Alex said. "What is it?"

The man was his friend. He owed him that. "Just wondering what kind of fish you are," Duncan said.

Alex laughed, short and sharp. He slid off the table. "Fish? I've always liked squid. Portable jet packs, right? And ten arms, and those huge eyes to see in the dark."

"Squid are mollusks, not fish."

Alex shrugged, gun held casually in his hand. "Creatures of the sea. Is he dead?"

"Probably, if he's kept his mouth closed this long."

"People are so cozy when they're dead." Alex came closer, standing over them, gun still in his hand.

Methos cracked one eye--and shoved roughly off Duncan, rolling swiftly to his feet and pointing his own hidden gun at his student. "I'm not dead yet," he said, dark and deadly.

Alex's eyes widened. "Dyedushka. You know me." He holstered his gun slowly and raised his hand.

"Nobody knows anyone." But Methos put his gun back under his shirt and backed off.

Duncan flattened his hands against the floor and tried to relax. "Guys."

"Second lesson, Alexei," Methos said.

Alex rubbed his hand over his head. "Trust no one."

"Not even yourself, because you don't know what damned thing your mind is going to play on you next. You were saying, MacLeod?" He gave Duncan a hand up and a sweet-faced smile.

"I was saying, play nice." Methos wandered over toward the showers and picked up a towel. He dropped his wrecked shirt on the floor. "You should get some practice in too," Duncan told Alex.

"Practice--you mean with a sword?" Alex smiled.

"No, with a halibut!"

"I haven't carried a sword in a hundred and fifty years. I beheaded the last guy with a butcher knife." Alex stroked the holster at his side. "I don't take heads if I can avoid it. I have my gun and that's all I need."

"Guns aren't part of the game."

"I'm not part of the game."

"It's not what we do," Duncan said, but Alex did have a point. It was only cheating if you used a gun and then took the head. Anything else, and they could recover.

"Arrows were against the rules back in the day," Methos said, toweling the blood off his body, "not that it ever stopped certain people."

"But there are always certain other people to stop certain people, right?" Alex's eyes flickered from Duncan to Methos and back.

"Something like that," Duncan said. It had been him.

Had been.

He was so damned tired.

Mulder never cooked. Over the course of the week, Amanda saw delivery people arrive at least once every single day. He never left the building. His only friend she could discover in-town was his ex-partner, a teacher down at Quantico.

He wasn't bad looking, she decided as she looked at him though the scope, just haggard; a bubble bath and a nice long romp between the sheets and he'd be a handsome man. He spent most of his time at the computer.

She wasn't the only person watching him. She spotted a van out front that never seemed to leave, though she never saw anyone changing shifts. They weren't Watchers. She was close enough to feel Mulder's Presence if he had any.

There was a great Chinese place just down the street. She stopped in around lunchtime for some beef with broccoli.

She smiled at the waiter. Information time. Cory wasn't very slick; if he'd been hanging around recently, she could find out. "Wow! This looks great. You know, I think a friend of mine might show--tall guy, dark hair, big green eyes set really far apart?"

The waiter snapped his fingers. "Really cute? Leather jacket?"

"Yeah!"

"He comes in every once in a while. I remember because he tried to pay with rubles this one time--it was so funny. You'd think you'd notice that the money is all the wrong size. He's friends with that FBI agent down the street, yeah?"

"Maybe. I don't know exactly; he's hard to keep track of."

"Your friend should get a cell phone." The waiter grinned.

"That's what I keep saying." Amanda shrugged and returned his grin.

Paid with rubles indeed. Obviously Cory wanted Mulder to know he was around; the question was why.

She was sipping tea, considering lychee ice cream, when Mulder walked in.

"I was starting to forget what you looked like," the waiter said.

"I've been busy," Mulder replied.

"But you can't stay up there all the time, eh?"

"I guess not." Mulder leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead.

"Hey, there's--oh, she's gone."

Amanda was already slipping out the back.

Getting in to Mulder's apartment was easy. She just slipped through the window; it was barely locked. It was finding anything that was hard.

She stared at the bulletin board in dismay. It covered an entire wall. There were hundreds of articles--how was she supposed to know what to look for? She couldn't even see any kind of organization system.

She gave up and looked at the computer. Very high-tech; she liked. And look--over the computer were two articles, singled out. She scanned them for names and details.

She heard a key in the door. Dammit! He should still have been in the restaurant!

She was in the office, her rope was hidden outside the living room window--and where did he sleep? There was no bed anywhere--but it didn't matter, and aha! Closet. She slipped inside the closet as the front door opened.

She heard paper rustle as Mulder walked straight into the office. She heard a beep and then the sound of a computer cycling up.

"Where did you go? You SOB," Mulder muttered. The paper rustled some more.

Dust. Dust in her nose. Amanda pinched her nose closed, but it only got worse.

Keytaps and the sounds of chewing and she had to sneeze so bad her eyes were watering.

"Dammit!" Mulder said suddenly. She heard the chair scrape back from the desk.

"Yuck," Mulder said. She heard footsteps--did the bag leak on him? She took a chance and peeked out of the closet, nose still pinched.

The office was clear. She couldn't see the rest of the apartment from there and she was going to--

She sneezed five or six times, soundlessly. Right up her nose, ew--and she peeked again and Mulder was there.

Going into the bathroom, hands dripping. He didn't see her.

He stepped into the bathroom and she rabbited out of the office, through the living room and out the window. When she was hooked back into the rope, she sneezed again, bouncing away from the wall with the force of it.

Some pro. Sheesh. She started climbing up the line, gathering it as she went.

She heard a window open; she froze. She looked down and saw Mulder's head poking out the window, and held her breath.

But he didn't look up. He scanned the street below carefully, lingering on the van Amanda had spotted before, but he didn't notice her. "So where'd you go?" Mulder muttered, almost too softly for her to hear, and he leaned back in and shut the window.

Amanda sneezed again and climbed back up to the roof.

Duncan held the door for Methos and Alex. Joe was on stage, setting up equipment. He waved.

Alex looked around the room, smiling faintly. Methos walked directly behind the bar and considered the liquor selection, chin in hand. "Get me a beer," Duncan told him as he shut the door firmly against the rain. Methos narrowed his eyes but picked up a glass.

Alex ran his hand over his head, flicking a halo of droplets from his hair. "The Watchers headquarter in bars?"

"No comment," Joe said. "You're not supposed to know about us, and you're definitely not supposed to know where we HQ."

Duncan laughed, sitting down at the bar; Methos handed him the beer. Alex peeled out of his borrowed coat and walked up the steps to the stage. "Nice setup. Good speakers."

"You a musician?"

"Sometimes." Alex knelt on the stage, looking at the back of the speakers. "I learned jazz piano back in the 30s. I was in a punk band around 1980," he said, grinning abruptly.

"Everyone was in a punk band around 1980," Methos said.

Duncan winced. Awful bloody noise, and it never seemed to go away. "I wasn't."

"Did you do the hair, Dyedushka?" Alex asked, waving his hand over his head.

"Liberty spikes. Bright blue. MacLeod, you should try that look." Methos carded through Duncan's curls from behind. Duncan swatted at his hands, but Methos was persistent.

Joe snorted. "I'll pay cash money for a picture. Hey, one of you want to go out to my van and bring in the amps?"

"Sure!" Duncan jumped away from Methos. "Er--which ones are those?"

Alex rolled his eyes. "I'll get them," he said, and Joe gave him the keys.

Duncan kept out of reach of Methos as he retrieved his beer. Methos smirked at him and said, "It really is time for a new look."

"Thanks but no thanks. I'm not taking fashion advice from someone with red corduroy trousers in his closet."

"Those are my emergency laundry pants, and they're comfortable..." Methos trailed off and half a second later, Duncan felt the new Presence as well. "Damn," Methos said. "Alley."

"Cory." Duncan jumped up and ran with Methos close on his heels.

He heard the stranger's voice as he ran down the hall to the open back door. "I was coming for MacLeod, but you'll do. Ha, an Immortal cripple!"

"An unarmed cripple," Alex said. "Sure you don't feel your conscience twingeing or anything?" Duncan reached the door and saw Alex standing in the alley with the open door of the van between him and an Immortal Duncan didn't recognize. Alex glanced at Duncan.

"Not really," the stranger said, looking at Duncan, "and the challenge has been made, MacLeod, you can't inter--" Alex shot him in the chest and he died mid-sentence.

"Good aim," Methos said over Duncan's shoulder.

"Thanks." Alex shut the van door and knelt over the body, going through the pockets: passport, wallet.

"Who is he?" Duncan asked.

Alex flipped open the passport. "American. Donald Boyd. Ring any bells?" He stuck it and the wallet into his back pocket and searched the man's coat further, coming up with a silver cigarette case and lighter.

"No. And what are you doing--don't rob him!"

"He tried to rob me of my life. He owes me." Alex slipped the watch off Boyd's wrist as well.

"Cory!"

Methos laughed. Alex looked up with a wide, bright smile--Cory's smile. "Dyedushka, help me get him to the river?"

"Sure. Give me a few of those credit cards for my trouble, though," Methos said, hand out. Alex wrinkled his nose but dug the wallet back out of his pocket.

"Adam!"

Methos looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide and innocent. "What?"

"You don't need money! And this is--oh, for Christ's sake." Duncan gave up. Using guns--that wasn't part of the Game. But robbing a man while he was down--that was just low.

Alex handed him a couple pieces of equipment, looking excessively amused, and Duncan stalked back into the bar. Joe met him at the stage steps. "What happened?"

Duncan set the equipment on the stage. "Cory shot a hunter, Donald Boyd. Didn't take his head. He and Methos are dumping him in the river. And I don't care what he says, Joe, the man was raised by wolves." Duncan slapped his palm on the top of the speaker.

"Which one?"

He threw his hands wide. "Either of them. They stole his wallet!"

Amusement danced in the corner of Joe's eyes. "Sounds fair to me. You pulls your sword, you takes your chances..." He bent down to check the wires to the speaker.

"Oh, not you too. Joe, there's a way things are supposed to be--a way we're supposed to do this, and they just don't." Combat with honor. Life without tricks. No killing mortals, because that was evil. No robbing corpses, because that was crass.

To act like men, not like jackals. Living well was more important than just living.

Wasn't it?

Joe wiggled the wires and straightened back up. "Things aren't always the way they're supposed to be, MacLeod," Joe said. He leaned both hands on his cane. "In fact, I'm inclined to say they never are. Not entirely."

"I know that."

"Tough being an idealist," Joe said.

Darius believed in the goodness of humanity--but lived on Holy Ground, because he couldn't trust in it. The false Methos trusted in it, and died. Joe hoped to break him out of the Dark Quickening, but carried a gun anyway and so lived. Sean Burns tried to talk him out of his madness, and died.

Richie trusted in him--to the end. Methos, ever wary, was still alive. "Maybe I should stop." Stop living up to ideals and start living down to reality.

"Sure. You can stop walking on the floor and use the walls, too, if you try hard enough." Joe cuffed his shoulder affectionately.

("You always heal. We all heal.")

Mac was practicing t'ai chi on the roof of the barge. Alex watched the slow movements of his hands--like... dancing, or like a mandala, the shape of it, the shape of his hands when you stood outside time and looked at the whole history of it. ("Like a new man.")

His own hands--he clenched his fists, one ghostly, one numb from a bullet, and let Mac draw the memories out of him like a magician.

("I love this country.")

Hands and the motion of his feet and ("the baby") Mac looked right at him, right at him, and ("where is it?") he could see his life, his entire life ("you're not leaving me here!"), from the frostbite pains in his feet to the aching emptiness of his shoulder to the sharp pain of the bullet in his arm--his memory was there in his body, all of it, if he could just touch it--

("It's going to take more bullets than you can ever fire to win this game.")

He opened his hand. The tiny sound of the cigarette packet on the pavement jarred him awake.

Grandfather bent and retrieved them. "We've been standing here for half an hour," Grandfather said.

"I was almost there." There were no bullets in his arm.

Not now.

("Shoot Mulder.")

Pain lanced through him and his knees buckled.

Amanda called Mac at the end of the week, and Methos answered this time. "Where's MacLeod?" she asked.

"Saving the universe, some damn thing. I think he's at the bank, actually."

"OK. I've only made it into Mulder's place once, and that was only for five minutes. I mean, I've been trying, but he never leaves. I can't even figure out when he sleeps--I've only ever seen him napping on the couch."

"Damn. See anything interesting that once?"

"Well, he's got everything you ever wanted to know about aliens," she scoffed. "I didn't see anything about Immortals, though, and nothing about Cory."

"Did you get any names? He's not going by Cory these days."

"His bulletin board? Huge. We're talking hundreds of names--there's just no way, not without some serious time. But a couple of things stood out. He had two newspaper articles stuck to the wall over the computer, not up on the bulletin board. One was on the disappearance of Dana Scully. That's his partner, right?"

"Right. That was seven years ago."

"The other is an article on a shooting by an FBI agent who's also listed as Mulder's partner. But it wasn't Scully, it was a guy, Alexander Krycek. K-R-Y-C-E-K."

"Hm." Methos sounded like he knew something. "I'll look it up. Thanks, Amanda, that's a help." He hung up.

A few minutes later, she saw Mulder leave with a duffel bag over his shoulder. She called Methos back. "He's on the move! He has a bag; it could be luggage. I'm following him."

"No! Hang on."

She heard typing. "What are you cracking into?"

"Never you mind."

"Ever pulled a heist?"

"Several," Methos said, laughing slightly. "Here, he has reservations on a flight to Paris. I think he found Cory."

"What do you want me to do? Follow him?"

"Yes--no, actually, no. What I want is for you to visit this address..."

Six locks on the door. No windows. Security camera. These guys were serious.

It took Amanda a good five minutes. Weak, girl, she thought as she slipped inside.

And there it was: the Lone Gunmen's secret lair. Dirty socks and all. She wrinkled her nose; it was definitely a guy's place. There was a stack of molding pizza boxes towering in the corner and five cases of Mountain Dew Code Red beside it. Two doors stood open, showing in one room an enormous pile of crumpled clothing parted like the Red Sea around a mattress and in the other room, a pin-straight bed and bright bookshelf. A third door was closed and padlocked.

The main room was dominated by rows of baker's racks holding computer peripherals and some very sweet telecommunications equipment. There were gaps in the shelves, though. Some things she would have expected were missing.

Hm. Maybe the Paypal link on their site wasn't just for beer money.

Boxes and boxes and boxes of papers were shelved and stacked and scattered around the edges of the rooms. She ignored those--no time--and sat down at the bank of computers.

Before she could crack in, the door banged open. Amanda looked up, wide-eyed.

Three men stood in the doorway, holding bags of Chinese takeout. One was gray-haired, short and sturdy, wearing a black leather vest and fingerless gloves. The second was tidy and bearded, in a conservative suit. The third had long, stringy, blond hair and wore a Ramones t-shirt.

"Why are the shadowy secret agents always so hot?" wailed the blond one.

"It's to throw us off our guard," growled the one in leather. He dropped his bag and drew his weapon. "Who are you working for?"

Amanda raised an eyebrow at the chopsticks in his hand. "You three are the Lone Gunmen?"

"Yes, and the truth will prevail despite all your attempts to conceal it!" said the one in the suit.

"I'm not interested in concealing anything, boys," she said as she stood, showing off her slinky black burglar suit. "Well--except this." She pulled her gun and all three drew back. The blond one clung to the one in the suit.

"Let's get to the point," Amanda said. "Why is Mulder going to Paris?"

The three stared at the gun. They looked back up at her as one. The one in leather squared his shoulders. "We'd rather die."

"That's right!" the blond yelped. "You can kill us with bullets--but you can never take our freedom!" Amanda glared at him and he hid behind the one in the suit again.

"We don't know, anyway," said the one in the suit. "We didn't know he was leaving."

"Is that your final answer?" Amanda asked, leveling the gun.

All three nodded.

"Fine." She pulled the trigger.

Direct hit on the circuit box. The lights went out and she made her exit in the dark confusion.

She scaled the next building, snickering to herself. They just didn't make henchmen like they used to.

"Mulder's chasing me. Someone shot me. I'm running," Alex muttered, staring down at the palm of his hand. "Someone shot me. I'm running, so Mulder is chasing me. Mulder shot me, I'm running from him."

"Don't forget 'family,'" Methos reminded him. He peered out the window of the barge.

"Damn it. All right, family shot me, Mulder is chasing family, family is chasing me. Family for one of us, between me and you, something I know, something of you..." Alex rippled his fingers in a rhythmic pattern. "Maybe the family of someone we killed," Alex said.

"Four hundred years ago?"

"Grudges hold for a long, long time."

"That they do." Methos looked out another window, waiting for MacLeod to report on Mulder, waiting for something to pull the threads together.

He spotted the too-obtrusive Watcher on the bridge and lost his patience. He called Joe.

"Yeah?" Joe answered.

"Do you think your guys could be a little bit more obvious? I'm not quite jittery enough."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your Watcher on the bridge!"

"What Watcher? I've got Amy on you and Bernard on Mac and that's it--and right now they're off-duty. We haven't got anyone assigned to Cory yet. Who are you talking about?"

"There's a--" Someone who wasn't acting like a Watcher should. "Gods and monsters," he snarled, furious at himself. "I guess I should be nervous."

"Someone's after you? Get out of there! Why do I even have to tell you that?" Joe said.

"Because I'm a bloody damned idiot. I'll call later." Methos hung up.

Damn and damn and damn.

"I think you might be right," he told Alex, and the phone rang again. Methos picked it up before the first ring ended. "Yes?"

"I missed Mulder," MacLeod said. "He must have gotten past me in the crowd."

"Come back to the barge. I'll have a plan by the time you get here." Methos set the phone down and glanced at Alex, who was doubled over rubbing his forehead.

He let out his breath and checked his weaponry. "Alex. Get your guns."

Methos and Alex stood on the deck of the barge, overlooking the river and the bridges beyond. Waiting. Alex had his submachine gun under his sweater

MacLeod waited across the way for Mulder to arrive. Alex let a cigarette burn in his hand absently. "I hate Paris," Methos said, speaking Russian with Alex. "I always have people hunting me in Paris."

"I haven't been to Paris since World War II," Alex said, and blew a smoke ring. "Looks better now."

The sun was low behind them. Over the constant hum of cars and city, Methos could hear the high barks of dogs, squawk of crows and occasional burble of pigeons. Human voices echoed along the water. "I would rather live in this time than any other," Methos said. "And do you know, that's how I've felt for as long as I've been alive."

"Probably why you are still alive."

"Probably." Methos smiled. "How are your feet, darling boy? I should have asked before."

"Healed--but I can't remember when. It's so jagged inside my head." Alex stood fixed, smoke seeping from his nose, hiding his face.

"It will heal."

"Not everything. I'm forgetting things, Grandfather. I'm forgetting my childhood," Alex said, his voice so soft it was barely audible over the lapping of the waves. "It's different from the brain damage. Things are getting pushed out."

Methos touched Alex's cheek with the back of his hand. "How far back can you remember?"

"Moscow, the beginning... but not clearly. I know it was clear once. I remember telling you things--but I can't remember the things themselves." Lines showed on Alex's face, lines that hadn't been there at his first death.

He brushed his hand down Alex's face and squeezed his shoulder. "Happens to all of us. Happened to me a long time ago."

"You're a lot older than five hundred years!"

"Think it feels any different? A life is a life, and I haven't got any teacher to remind me of who I used to be." Eight hundred years old when his teacher asked to die. Three hundred years older than Alex was now. He'd thought he was a wise old man then, but he'd still been a child.

After his teacher died, he met Kronos, and everything changed. Then, then he'd started to grow up.

Alex looked down at the cigarette in his hand. He crushed it and let it drop into the water. "I'm not strong."

"You're still here." Still alive, and that was everything that mattered.

"I'm losing hold of Cory. Should I want to?"

"That's not a question I can answer for you."

"I had a lot of fun as Cory. Amanda and I..." He smiled faintly. "But in the end, I'm not Cory, am I? Not really."

"You've taken--two heads in your life?"

"Three," Alex said. "Oleg Blackbeard, Cory Raines, and William Fold."

"Is it easier or harder each time?"

"Harder." Alex looked at him finally. "It means I'm dying, doesn't it?"

"Only if you want to. Look, we die for two reasons: we make a mistake, or we give up. Don't give up! Remember the first lesson." He cupped the back of Alex's head, but Alex didn't meet his eyes. "Live."

"Grow stronger," Alex murmured. "Fight."

"Fight later. First you live."

Alex smiled and took the cigarettes from his pocket. "Got it." He lit another cigarette and they stood together, watching quietly.

"You're still the man I met in Moscow," Methos said.

"I'm not--"

"You are. Men have facets. One or the other may come to the surface, but you're still the man, under that. Trust me."

"Trust no one," Alex said, letting out a heavy puff of smoke.

"You're an irritatingly good student, Alexei." Methos touched the back of his neck. "But you can trust me on this."

Alex dropped his eyes. When he looked up, he looked past him. "Someone's coming."

A cab drove slowly along the street in front of the barge, then stopped. Methos tensed and Alex turned to face it. A man stepped out, a plain man in a sober black suit--Mulder. Methos knew him from pictures.

Alex caught his breath. He panted--once, twice. His cigarette fell to the ground.

"Alex?" Methos said quietly. The cab left and the man glared up at them. MacLeod was in position behind him.

"It's all come back," Alex whispered, swaying on his feet. Methos took his elbow. Alex pulled away and straightened up. His face hardened over and stilled as his shoulders stiffened. "I know exactly who I am. I know exactly what happened."

"Krycek," Mulder snarled. Alex stepped forward. They stared at each other over the gangplank.

Alex bent and picked up the cigarette, giving Mulder a stony look over the still-glowing ember as MacLeod moved out of hiding and into place.

"That supposed to mean something? You son of a bitch, why aren't you dead?"

"You're looking at me as if you know me. You don't know me," Alex said in English. Behind Mulder, MacLeod gave Alex a sharp, shocked look. "This situation between us has never been what you think it is," Alex continued.

"Oh, I know you all right," Mulder said, and reached into his coat and drew a gun. MacLeod grabbed him from behind and disarmed him quickly. Methos took Alex by the shoulder and hustled him into the barge; MacLeod followed with his hand over Mulder's mouth.

Alex stuck his cigarette in Methos' mouth. "There's no time. I have to go," Alex said. He pulled MacLeod's sweater off and picked up his fake arm for the first time since he arrived.

"What are we supposed to do with him?" Methos said, indicating Mulder. Mulder struggled frantically in MacLeod's arms.

Alex strapped on the arm. "Sit on him. Keep him out of my way for a while, please--I'll call when it's safe. I have to go now." He put the sweater back on and took MacLeod's black leather coat from the closet.

Mulder's eyes locked on Alex, bright with hate. Alex looked him over slowly, then turned to Methos. "He's harmless. He's cried wolf so many times that nobody will ever believe him again. Dyedushka--" He kissed Methos on both cheeks. Methos ruffled his hair.

Alex crossed the barge swiftly. "You too, Mac." He elbowed Mulder's head out of the way and kissed MacLeod's mouth.

Then he was gone.

MacLeod looked a bit stunned. Methos checked his weapons and took the duct tape from his pocket.

MacLeod released Mulder's mouth and Mulder immediately began shouting: "You sons of bitches! Don't you know who he is--" Methos cut him off with the duct tape.

They stuck Mulder in the trunk of the car and went to find a nice vacant lot to wait. Methos watched the road nervously, looking for tails. "Care for a game of cards?" He asked.

MacLeod snorted rudely. "I'm not playing poker with you. You cheat."

"Don't be such a grouch," Methos said, scanning the cars around them.

Clear again. When he looked into the world, he saw the secrets and machinations once again. He knew who he was and what he had to do.

Krycek bought a phone card from a vending machine in Heathrow.

Two rings. "Yes?" Grandfather, and the sounds of a car.

"Grandfather."

"Where did you leave my car?"

"De Gaulle long-term parking."

"Good. Now tell me everything!"

Everything. They could be there for years. "Mulder is nothing. He's the reason I got shot, that's all. He's nothing to you." Krycek stared at the graffiti at the back of the phone carrel. "Someone is coming for you, Grandfather. One of your old students."

"Who?"

"Big guy. A Norseman. When I saw him, he was rafting to Britain, and that was four weeks ago." He'd been shown the satellite photos: something climbing out of the ice. He'd taken a helicopter out to Greenland and found another Immortal.

"How do you know he was one of mine?"

"He felt like one of your students. You know how you change us." The Quickening changed tone--changed feel. Alex had known immediately. Personal, he'd told his soldiers, nothing to worry about, and that's an order, and he'd given his teacher a too-cryptic call before going to Washington and getting his idiot brain turned into Swiss cheese. "And he said your name, Grandfather. Your real name."

Methos.

"Did he, now?" Methos said.

"You're a good liar, Grandfather." He'd been the first one to tell Alex of Methos.

Alex had heard more rumors of Methos from time to time, stories of a man older than history, full of power and wisdom. Then, when he was still in Europe after the Great War, a young Immortal came up to him on the street bubbling over with word of the ancient man. Word that he was there in Amsterdam, speaking to anyone who would see him. Of course Alex went to see.

What he found was a man with many foolish words and a Presence that, while strong, was not nearly as strong as his own teacher's. The man's advice was suicide. The young Immortal that brought him was beheaded a week later.

On the boat back to America, he'd thought long and hard about wisdom, folly and the naming of names. Eighty years later, the Norseman confirmed what he'd already known in his heart.

He looked at his new watch. "I should go."

"Wait. What the hell are you up to lately, anyway?"

"I'm a shadowy black ops agent."

"Are you now."

"I'm saving the planet," Alex said, and God help him, but it was the truth.

"Oh, I believe you. Pop by if you're in the area."

"Sit on Mulder for another hour, all right?" He felt a little sorry for Mulder with his FBI wings pulled off, but it made things easier on everyone--including Mulder.

"No problem. We have him in the trunk; he's nice and subdued there."

"Thanks." Alex hung up the phone and turned to the soldier standing next to him. Part human, part alien, part him. They'd been watching, waiting for him to recover, waiting for new orders. "That's all," he said.

The soldier said nothing, but simply turned and walked away. Krycek followed.

"You look like you have something to say," Methos said.

Stress showed in the set of MacLeod's shoulders and the set of his jaw. "Not a word."

"Here." Nice, dodgy residential street. Nobody would pay any attention to a hysterical man.

MacLeod pulled over and popped the trunk, exposing a slightly shaky and entirely pissed-off Mulder. He tore off the duct tape and Mulder immediately shouted: "You're making a big mistake! You're on the wrong side!" He grabbed MacLeod's hand as MacLeod pulled him up out of the car. "He's a killer! He's a spy! He's working with the aliens--with the conspiracy! Help him and you'll just find the knife in your back!"

MacLeod pried him off and pushed him down onto the sidewalk. Mulder popped right back up like a jack-in-the-box, but by then MacLeod was back in the car and driving off. Methos watched Mulder chase them in the wing mirror.

"Aliens?" Methos said.

"Tell me he's wrong," MacLeod said.

Saving the planet, Alex said. "He's certainly wrong about the aliens."

"Wrong about your student."

Methos shrugged. "What do you think?"

"I think I need a drink." MacLeod switched on the blinker.

"Yeah, me too," Methos sighed.

Thorfinn coming for him.

What the hell was he going to do?

Joe hung up the phone as they came in. "You don't happen to know where Alex is going, do you?"

"He didn't say." Duncan sat down at the bar. Methos sat beside him, looking worried. "He ducked his Watcher?"

"Between your place and the airport. The guy swears he followed the right cab, but the wrong guy got out. It might be a new record, I don't know." Joe picked up his towel and rubbed down the bar. "Get you something?"

Methos folded his hands under his chin. Duncan could see him chewing the inside of his cheek; no, this business wasn't over yet. "Whisky for a condemned man," Methos said.

"Likewise," Duncan said, looking at Methos. "What's going on?"

Methos lowered his head and darted his tongue into the corner of his mouth, painting it red with blood. "A student is coming for my head," he said, "and this one I can't beat. Bring on your best, Joe. I'm going to take Xavier's advice."

A cold shiver ran through him at the name. "Which is?"

"To live every day as if I were condemned to die!" Methos unclasped his hands with a flourish.

Joe raised an eyebrow and poured him a highball. "So, you're gonna tell off your boss and kiss all the pretty girls?"

"Ooh, good idea." Methos slammed back the drink. "I'm going to meet him outside Paris. It's Thorfinn. He doesn't play well with others."

"If he can come back from the dead I'd like to meet him," Duncan said. One more lie from Methos--really, he wasn't surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

"I thought--well, I thought I took care of him. Okay, it wasn't one of my best moves, but I left him frozen into a glacier. In Greenland. Above the Arctic Circle. It should have held him."

"Mm-hm." Joe pulled a calculator from beside the cash register. "How long ago was this?"

Methos frowned. "720, 730 AD."

"Thirteen hundred years, maybe he takes a breath once a month and melts half a millimeter of ice... how deep did you bury him?"

Methos narrowed his eyes. "Shut up and get me another drink. I never claimed to be a genius, Joe."

"Yeah, but you did claim not to be an idiot. Have mine," Duncan said, shoving his drink over. Methos shot him a glare but picked it up. "If he's been buried in the ice for thirteen hundred years, how does he know where to find you? He wouldn't have any money or know how to speak the language. He wouldn't even know what a car or a telephone was."

"He has feet. Alexei saw a raft. I guarantee he's on the move right now, heading straight for me." Methos slammed the second drink as well.

"Yeah, but how does he know you're here and not in Mexico or something? Come on, Methos."

Joe leaned on the bar. "You're not talking about a good guess, are you? You're saying he actually knows."

"Sure does." Methos wiggled his fingers for another drink. Joe shook his head, staring Methos in the eye. "Bastard. He knows the same way Alex knew, the same way the needle of a compass knows where North is or a salmon knows where it was spawned. It's part of being my student."

"You sort of... tune their Quickenings?"

"Yes. All of them. Except--Kronos, of course, but--" Methos looked shifty and sad for a moment. "That's not important."

No, it was ridiculous. "You can't do that," Duncan said.

Joe turned to MacLeod, raising his eyebrow. "Says the man who fought a Zoroastrian demon on the astral plane! Mac, this isn't even close to being the weirdest Quickening trick in Watcher records."

"I would nominate Kitsune from Edo for that," Methos muttered.

"Don't change the subject," Joe said. "What's the plan?"

Methos shrugged. "Right now, it's just to meet him outside Paris. If he makes it into the city, it's going to be a great big problem for everyone. He's not a nice boy..." He trailed off and froze, eyeing the door.

Duncan felt the Presence a split second later. He put his hand on his sword.

The door swung open with a spray of rain. "You two have become predictable in your old age," Amanda said, shaking out her umbrella. "You're not at the barge, so you're at the bar."

Methos sagged against the bar. Duncan relaxed. "Hi, Amanda."

She marched over and draped herself across him. "Should I even mention that you weren't at the airport, either?"

"We were busy." Duncan kissed her. Just off the plane and she looked amazing--wearing a low-cut, knee-length dress, hair smooth and sleek as fur, not a smudge in her makeup.

"Mm-hm." She crossed her arms over his chest. "Where's Cory?"

"Gone."

"He got his memory back and remembered he left the oven on," Methos said. "Come on, Joe, last drink for a dead man."

Joe shook his head and poured him another.

"So what exactly is going on?" Amanda asked.

"He'll be coming from the north. He'll probably follow the river, so just drop me off and I'll take it from there," Methos said as they left Joe's. A nice spiky bear pit, maybe, a few snares... he'd fought all around Paris over the years and dirty war was his particular forte.

"And just leave you? I don't think so," MacLeod said.

"Yes, just leave me! You can't interfere with the fight; what exactly do you intend to do?" Not to mention that he couldn't use quite as dirty tactics if MacLeod was there keeping an eye on him.

MacLeod punched his shoulder. "I peel you off the floor with a spatula after you take his head."

"I fight my own battles, thank you very much."

"Sure, except when you can get me to do it for you," MacLeod was saying, but Methos wasn't really paying attention, because he felt another Presence.

"You!" The voice sounded from the mist. The language was Old Norse. Methos drew his sword.

"You bastard!" Thorfinn roared, stepping out of the alley. Methos backed away from the others, leading him out into the middle of the street as he charged.

Thorfinn was nearly seven feet tall. When Methos last saw him, he'd been a warrior in his prime; now he was thin, ragged, and caked with dirt. Still, he swept the enormous double-headed axe through the air as if it were a toy. His anger fueled him.

Methos danced aside twice as Thorfinn swung his axe down upon him. He pinked Thorfinn's leg, but Thorfinn didn't seem to feel it; he shouted and swung from the side. His reach was far, far greater than Methos'. Methos needed to somehow slip inside his guard. He ducked down and under his arm--but he slipped on the wet pavement and Thorfinn managed to trap him against his body with his arm and axe.

They spun, pushing against each other. Methos saw MacLeod standing to one, side, katana drawn but held back against his arm--because of course he wouldn't interfere, the honor-addled son of a bitch. Methos stuck Thorfinn's foot with the point of the sword and Thorfinn grunted and let him go.

They stepped apart and Methos swung. He sliced Thorfinn's neck--and Thorfinn's axe smashed Methos to the ground, biting into his upper arm and snapping his sword halfway along its length as it plunged into the pavement.

Thorfinn staggered back a step, visibly dizzy, blood pouring down his chest. Methos rolled--his arm was loose in the confines of his sleeve--he was bleeding by the bucketful and losing consciousness fast. He was dying. He was going to die in Paris. He hated Paris!

A car screeched in and honked. Methos felt himself being lifted and thrown, and the car peeled away. "I hotwired it," Amanda said breathlessly. "I hope you don't mind."

"You're forgiven," MacLeod said.

Methos died.

Finally, a taxi. Thank God those sons of bitches hadn't stolen his wallet.

Mulder waved it down and climbed in the back. "Hi, I... that is, um, je veux, um..."

"Put the guide book away, Mr. Tourist," the taxi driver said. He barely had an accent. "Where are you heading?"

Mulder sighed and rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. "I need a drink."

"No problem. I'll take you to the best bar in town." The driver pulled into traffic.

The bar that gave him the best kickbacks, probably, but whatever. Mulder slumped back into the seat and considered his life.

"Here we are," the driver said.

"Thanks." Mulder got out and handed him a ten-euro note and the driver beamed. He had a funny tattoo on the inside of his wrist, something with the look of ritual, but not a symbol Mulder recognized: a circle with a stylized V in the center. He would have grabbed the man's hand to get a closer look, but he was already driving away.

Another mystery slipping through his fingers. He trudged toward "Le Blues Bar" morosely.

A guy was hosing off the pavement down the street a bit--strange, since it was raining. And there was another guy, on his knees, picking stuff up.

Too strange. Mulder veered off and headed toward them, trying to see what they were actually doing.

There were gashes in the sidewalk. The one guy was picking--metal? Shards out of the gashes. The guy with the hose looked up as Mulder approached. "What's going on?" Mulder asked.

Both guys just stared at him.

"I'm FBI--" No he wasn't, not any more. "This looks like the scene of a crime, what's happened?"

"Quoi?" the hose guy said, raising his eyebrows. His accent was not French.

"Don't play dumb!" He straightened up and his back twanged like a piano wire, singing pain from his shoulders right down to his knees.

"Pardon?" the other guy said. He held six-inch tweezers and a small ziplock bag full of tiny metal fragments.

"I know what you're up to," Mulder growled. "I know all about the conspiracies." The guy with the hose shut it off and coiled it over his arm; the guy with the tweezers sealed up the bag and stuck it in his pocket.

"Truth will out!" Mulder shouted, but they ignored him. A cop turned the corner and strolled toward them.

Layers of conspiracy everywhere he turned--there was a reason the cab driver brought him here. There was a reason Krycek was here in Paris, and that he was still alive. Mulder didn't believe in coincidence any more.

The two guys looked from Mulder to the cop. Mulder whirled and walked into the bar. He did believe in prudence.

The place was empty save for the bartender, who hung up the phone as Mulder came in. "Are you open?" Mulder asked.

The bartender was a kind-looking older man, which meant he was probably an alien ninja assassin. He shrugged. "Technically, no, but I'm here and you're here and you look like you need a drink. What's your poison?" He had an American accent.

"Fugu," Mulder said, sitting at the bar.

"Do I look Japanese?" the bartender demanded, pointing his finger in Mulder's face. "If you're going to jerk me around, you can get your ass back outside."

"Beer." Mulder collapsed down onto his folded arms.

"Coming right up." Mulder heard the clink of glass and the hiss of the tap, then the bartender set a glass beside him as the phone rang again. "Blues Bar," the man answered. "Oh yeah? Gotcha." He hung up.

Mulder was probably going to be abducted any second. He straightened up and drank his beer. "What happened outside?" he asked.

"Beats me. Was like that when I came in."

Either the bartender was a smooth liar, or he wasn't lying. "So I'm Joe," the bartender said. "Did you know you've got gravel stuck in the back of your coat?"

Mulder nodded and drank again.

Joe spread his hands. Something showed just under the cuff of his shirt, something that wasn't a watch. Joe moved like a veteran; it was probably a tattoo. "So I'm a bartender, and you're a guy who looks like he needs to talk."

"You wouldn't even begin to believe me."

"Oh yeah? Try me. I've heard some pretty weird things."

Mulder stared up at him. "I just got kidnapped by two thugs in the service of a immortal human-alien hybrid who's collaborating with evil aliens trying to take over the planet. That weird enough for you?"

"Sounds like Paris to me," Joe said. Both his hands were planted on the bar, so Mulder couldn't see the inside of his wrist, but Mulder bet that tattoo wasn't military at all. He bet it matched the taxi driver's.

Cults. Secret societies. Mulder leaned back and eyed him. "Have you ever had the sensation of missing time?"

"Pull in here," Krycek told the soldier.

Of course the soldier obeyed. He didn't really have a choice. "Come on," Krycek said, and headed down the path to the church.

It was nearly twenty years ago they caught him, he realized suddenly. Twelve years since the Smoker's coup, which freed him from the lab. The Smoker realized a valuable piece of property when he saw one, even if it was nearly catatonic from captivity.

He wondered how many gallons of blood and strips of flesh they took from him over the years. He wondered how many still remained in storage. He wondered how many milliliters of blood and inches of flesh went into each of those soldiers.

Krycek walked through the gates of the quiet churchyard. The soldier followed, a few steps behind, and burst into flames.

Hm. Efficient. He'd hoped that would work, but he hadn't been sure.

The soldier burned fast, consumed from the inside, all the parts of Krycek added to his body turning traitor against him. He didn't have the chance to scream much.

And Krycek had forgotten to get the damned keys from him. He sighed and searched his pockets for a screwdriver or a knife--hot-wiring a car was a bitch with only one hand.

He left the body behind. It was his body. He wanted it burnt.

Methos resurrected inside MacLeod's car, parked in a dark, secluded place. He grabbed his bad arm and found, to his immense relief, that it was nearly healed.

He was resting in MacLeod's lap. Amanda hovered over the front seat. "We're safe," Amanda said.

"I interfered." MacLeod sounded shocked at himself.

Amanda wrinkled her nose at him. "Of course you interfered. Methos is your friend. He would have done the same for you."

"Have done," Methos said.

Amanda smiled. "How are you feeling?"

He was feeling lousy, of course, but Amanda was leaning over him in that delightfully low-cut dress... He sat up and coughed. "Here dons, grandees, but chiefly dames abound, skilled in the ogle of a roughish eye, yet ever well inclined to heal the wound; none through their cold disdain are doomed to die, as moon-struck bards complain, by love's sad archery."

"Oh I see," Amanda said, fluttering her eyelashes at him. Methos leaned up and kissed her lightly.

MacLeod scowled. "Look, I'm not interfering again," he said. "Next time you had better be ready."

Methos nodded. "I need another sword."

"Warehouse," MacLeod said. "Amanda, trade places. You took that last corner on two wheels."

"Picky," Amanda sniffed.

Amanda was engrossed in a jewelry box. "...should have robbed him years ago," Methos overheard her mutter.

"Too light," Methos said, trying out a rapier. "I need as much power as I can muster."

MacLeod rattled around atop a ladder. "I'm looking! But I'll tell you, I don't think a sword exists that can stand up to that axe. You might be better off with a girder. Or a steamroller."

"I had an iron staff the last time. The idea was to bludgeon the other guy to the ground, then take his head with the little axe I kept in my belt. Worked pretty well, but we haven't got the time for me to make another one." Methos tossed the rapier aside and tugged at his ear, trying to trigger his memory. "What did I do with Silas' axe?"

"The Watchers took it when they cleaned up the place. Try this," MacLeod said, handing down a large bastard sword.

Methos unsheathed it and balanced it in his hand. "Oh, this is much better. Here, do you mind?" he said, indicating a battered wooden stand.

"Be my guest."

Methos circled around the stand, swinging the sword slowly over his head, then darted in and cut the top neatly off the stand with one swing. It landed in Amanda's lap. "Oh yes, this'll do."

Amanda tossed the chunk of wood at him. "Do you seriously think you can beat him? Because from where I was standing, you didn't stand a chance."

"I have no choice but to fight."

She raised her eyebrows. "Is MacLeod throwing his voice? Okay, how about this: Mac challenges him, and you sneak up from behind..."

"No," they both said together.

"We're doing this by the Rules," MacLeod said. "Without the Rules, we're without honor."

"I'm doing this alone. It's my battle; he started it when he killed Saebbi," Methos said. He sheathed the sword.

Amanda and MacLeod both looked at him. "Saebbi?" Amanda asked.

"Yeah. Saebbi." Methos perched on a chair next to Amanda. "After I hunted Rachel, I went north. I ended up traveling alongside some Viking raiders along the coast of Denmark. One of them went through first death in a battle--that was Thorfinn. I made him my student out of a sense of obligation, I suppose. I didn't like him much and we went on our separate ways not long after. I headed north to Sweden, wandered around for a few decades and eventually settled down as a blacksmith in a little village tucked into the forest. Nice and quiet."

"If only things stayed that way," MacLeod said, descending the ladder.

"Yeah. I was there a few years, got myself established, and one day a boy came traveling through the forest. One of us for six months without knowing it. He was a sweet kid, so I took him in and made him my student and apprentice. That was Saebbi." Methos rubbed his chin. "One day I came home and found Saebbi's head sitting on my doorstep. Thorfinn was inside by my fire. I asked him why he killed the boy and he said, well, you told me: that's what we do. Thorfinn just... didn't give a damn. So I challenged him."

"But didn't kill him."

"I had to chase him a long time before I caught him. While I didn't like him, I respected him-- both as a warrior and as my student. I saw him using the tricks I taught him and-- I don't know. I couldn't do it." He shook his head. "Moment of weakness, like I said."

MacLeod sighed. "Do you think you can beat him in a fair fight?"

Thorfinn had ended each training session by knocking him to the ground gleefully. Even critically wounded, even blind, he pinned Methos to the ground and laughed. "Not really, no. Last time he hit an air pocket in the snow and sank in right up to his knees. But if I run, he'll follow me. I want to choose my ground." The city would confuse Thorfinn; he'd never seen anything other than the tiniest of villages. He could run him down with a car... get him to attack the car, then slide in behind him. In a city, he could improvise in ways Thorfinn couldn't imagine.

"So it's like you were saying the other day--the strong man versus the canny man."

"I need to uneven the fight." Methos smiled. "You learn fast, MacLeod."

Amanda cleared her throat to catch their attention. "Boys? I may have a solution."

"I'm all ears," Methos said.

She smiled. "The Methuselah Stone."

She explained as MacLeod drove them to the bank. "After you left, Methos, I rented some scuba gear. It's only a river, right? It took a little time, but I dug up all the pieces."

"And the Methuselah Stone is sitting in your safety deposit box," MacLeod said, hollow-voiced.

"Where else?"

"What does it do?" Methos asked. He leaned over the back of the passenger seat, hand white-knuckled against the leather. His nails dug into the slickness. MacLeod's interior would never be the same.

Emotion slid across Amanda's expressive face: amazement and fear. "It's-- strange. I held it in my hand, and as long as it touched my skin, I couldn't be hurt. Not even as much as we're normally hurt. It was like I was turned to stone, but I could move just like normal, and I felt just the same."

"You could fight and take no damage." Invincible. Unstoppable.

"I tried breaking a bone but I dented the table. I tried cutting my arm but I couldn't even make a scratch."

"And you don't use this?" Methos exclaimed.

Amanda shook her head, looking down at her hands. "It feels... wrong. Like it pulls something out of you. Like looking into a mirror that looks back. It scared me."

"I see." Methos relaxed a little into the seat. "You're a wise woman, Amanda."

Amanda smiled back at him. "I haven't gotten this far on just my looks, you know."

"What happens if it goes wrong?" MacLeod asked Methos. "What if that power takes you over?"

Methos shrugged. "Then you have a bit of a problem. But I don't think it will. I have a little experience with temptation." Only two thousand years.

MacLeod shot him a look. "I just want to make sure we're not chasing a housefly with a bazooka."

"That guy was no housefly," Amanda said, leaning forward and petting MacLeod's shoulder. "Have a little faith."

"I have plenty of faith," MacLeod protested.

"I'm fair glowing from it," Methos said.

The bank official left them alone in the deposit box room. Amanda lifted the box reverently and stroked it.

Mac watched the door. "Time is a little short, Amanda. God only knows what Thorfinn is doing out there."

She rolled her eyes and opened the box. Inside were a number of jewelry boxes and a soft velvet bag. "It doesn't do anything unless you touch it," she said, and picked up the bag. "What do you think--try it out in here first?"

"Yeah. If it doesn't work on me, we'll need a backup plan." Methos opened the mouth of the bag tentatively, letting it fall back over Amanda's hand. The crystal was inside, a faceted whole rather than a jumble of pieces. He hadn't been dreaming.

He picked it up.

He felt the power running through his veins, like a Quickening made of water rather than fire. He felt it wash over his skin like the tide across the sand, changing him, reshaping him. He closed his eyes and swayed.

"Guess it worked," Amanda said.

"Try it out," Methos said. His voice sounded miles away to his own ears. He opened his eyes and saw Mac and Amanda as in a dream: distant, unreal. He saw Amanda pull her sword and swing.

The sword bounced off his leg. "I didn't even feel it," he said. "It worked." He curled his hand into his chest, unwilling to let the stone go.

Back to DC. What was it Grandfather said--he hated Paris, because he felt like he was always hunted? Krycek hated Washington with a passion.

A few more steps and he could leave it behind for good.

He locked himself in the bathroom and took out the phone he'd taken from the soldier. He dialed the central computer--hopefully it would work in the air--and the call went through, connecting him with the controller for the soldiers.

He keyed in the command code, then the coordinates. Roundup. Hopefully they would all be within a few hours of the location.

He didn't see why they wouldn't be. They were set to sleep after the birth of the second-gen model--also known as Scully's baby, William. They were obsolete.

And William... he'd seen the plans for that child. A Judas goat, leading humanity right into the loving arms of the aliens, programmed with their DNA and protected by his. He'd tried to kill it before it was born; it only got easier after it was out of the womb.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and return to his seat.

Duncan drove in circles, looking for signs of Thorfinn's passing. In the back seat, Amanda was wrapping duct tape around Methos' stomach. "I think I saw this look in New York City," she said.

The baseball-sized stone made a comical lump on Methos' midsection. "Just make sure it stays," Methos replied. He didn't sound quite like himself; he sounded unfocused. "It needs to stay, it's vital..."

Duncan heard a siren coming up behind him, fast, and pulled over to let the police car pass. A second car followed hard on its heels. He waited a breath or two and followed them.

"God, I haven't felt like this in years," Methos said. Duncan caught a flicker of motion as he pulled the shirt back over his head and tucked it into his pants. "If something goes wrong and Thorfinn takes my head, take his while he's down. Promise me."

"I promise," Amanda said.

Methos sat up. His nails dug into the seat beside Duncan's head. "Yeah, you're tough. Wouldn't mind living with you until the end of time."

At the mouth of the bridge, firefighters were battling a blazing row of warehouses. Under the bridge, Thorfinn paced back and forth, swinging his axe. He stopped when the car came within range and waited.

Duncan looked over his shoulder. Methos' face was mask-like; when he squared his shoulders, a shiver of Quickening energy ran over his skin. He looked like the warrior he was. "Go, finish it," Duncan said.

Methos slipped out of the car without a backwards glance.

Amanda took his hand. "He'll win."

"I know."

Thorfinn smashed Methos to the ground and Methos popped right back up. "You want him to win," Amanda said.

He pressed her hand to his mouth. Her fingers were rough, as they always were: the legacy of her mortal life. None of them could entirely escape what they had been. "I know."

Sparks flew across the pavement as ash-muddied water rained down from the bridge above. Duncan stepped out of the car and watched the men wielding hoses, making sure none of them noticed the second battle below them. He heard their shouts, incoherent amid the blaze.

Thorfinn fell to his knees, bleeding from throat and gut and thigh. His axe lodged in the cement before him. He said something in a language Duncan didn't recognize and Methos answered him in the same.

Methos stepped behind him, sword behind his head, and swung.

The car door clicked shut. Amanda met his eyes as the Quickening raged under the bridge and the storm clouds were summoned above. "It's the Game," Duncan said. "There can be only one winner. I'm glad it was Methos." Reassuring her--but they weren't empty words. It was only the truth. He wanted to see Methos alive more than he wanted to see him fight fair.

Methos stepped out of the mist, sword over his shoulder, peeling the stone from his chest. Power crawled over his skin like liquid spiders. "This feels really quite remarkable," he said. "Want some?" He spread his hands. His clothes hung in tatters from Thorfinn's cuts.

"No thanks," Duncan said.

"We shared once before," Methos said. "Wasn't so bad."

Duncan shook his head. "Methos, put the sword down."

"Why? Am I making you nervous?" Methos circled around Duncan and Amanda, rubbing his sword against the back of his neck. His collar was sliced into ribbons, but his neck was untouched.

"No," Duncan said, turning so that Methos couldn't stand behind him--because the answer was yes, even though he didn't want it to be.

Methos' skin pulsed with light. For a second, Duncan could see shapes tattooed beneath his skin: the teeth of a serpent outlined on his forehead and chin, curving around the margins of his face. "It's a bit like the old days, you know? Being the toughest guy around, knowing there was nobody in the world that could take me on..."

"The bad old days." Mac nudged Amanda behind him.

Methos looked at the crystal. "Just the old days."

"Methos." Amanda stepped out from behind Mac, holding out the velvet bag. "We need to go. The police will come."

"Yes... we need to go." Methos smiled. He curled the stone against his shoulder and swung his sword around abruptly. Mac jumped in front of Amanda, drawing his sword.

Methos sheathed his sword inside his coat. He reached past Mac slowly and dropped the stone into the bag; the power crawled over his skin and disappeared into his eyes.

He raised an eyebrow at Mac. Mac sheathed his sword again. "Sorry," he said.

The corners of Methos' mouth pulled down in an ironic smile. "Let's go home."

The skies opened. The rain poured down, dousing the warehouse fire.

Krycek looked down at his army. Twenty soldiers, all that remained.

"We're taking the laboratory," he told them, pointing down to the low, flat building that had kept him captive for seven long years. "Control all the people inside."

They nodded as one.

There was only one entrance, guarded by two sharp-eyed soldiers. They were no match for the hybrid supersoldiers and were disarmed easily. "Tie them up outside," Krycek said.

The door codes took a few minutes. Inside, they quickly overpowered six scientists and discovered three subjects.

Krycek looked the scientists in the eye one by one. He didn't recognize four of them--but two he did. "Dr. Cameron. Dr. Rochers. You probably don't recognize me upright."

Cameron just stared, shocked and afraid beyond words. "We don't know you at all," Rochers said. She always did have more balls.

"Subject 312," he said, and she took a deep breath and shrank away. "Karma is a bitch, isn't it, Doctor?"

He turned away to look at the subjects. The first was an older man with deep cuts, mostly-healed, all over his body. He lay shivering on a gurney, but when Krycek looked into his eyes, he was awake. "Do you want to live or die?" Krycek asked softly. "It's not a trick question."

There was no sound, but he mouthed "die."

Krycek looked up at the nearest soldier. "Break his neck. No pain." He moved on to the next gurney, which held a thirtyish woman trailing machinery even he didn't recognize. When he pried her eyelids open, there was no reaction. Her pupils filled her entire iris.

She wasn't in there. She was never going to wake up. "The same," he said.

The next subject looked up at him, fingers knotted in her ragged hair, and immediately said, "I want to live."

Krycek nodded. "We'll take care of you, little sister."

A soldier took her outside. Krycek looked over the scientists he didn't recognize. "You know," he said, "the economy isn't that bad. You didn't have to work here."

"What are you going to do?" one asked.

Krycek turned to the nearest soldier. "Put them in that cell." He pointed to the room at the end of the hall.

He'd scratched his name in the walls a hundred times over when he still cared enough to remember he was alive.

"Please," said Rochers.

Krycek looked at her. "Please what? Please forgive you for torturing me?"

"You healed," she said.

He stared at her, feeling the ghosts of the past in every corner, tasting motor oil in his mouth. "Lock them up," he told the soldiers, and he marched back outside.

"Inside. Help the others, then stay there until I give you another order." Krycek locked the door behind them. He looked at the two tied-up guards and the battered girl, thinking about the quality of mercy.

"He's okay," the girl said, pointing to the younger guard. He was probably twenty-five; behind the gag, he looked scared. "He gave me a Snickers bar."

Krycek nodded. "Okay. Help me move him." He grabbed one arm, the girl grabbed the other, and together they dragged him about thirty feet up the hill.

"Stay right here," Krycek said. He took off his coat, draped it over the girl's bony shoulders and jogged back down the hill to the entrance. The other soldier lay there, struggling, anger in his eyes.

Power was like water and fire combined; it flowed as much as it flickered. It wasn't really electricity; it was something else. It was something Immortals could control if they wanted to, if they were old enough.

And desire could make up for inherent power. Krycek pushed up his sleeve and sank the metal talons of his prosthesis deep into his arm. The second guard stared at him. Krycek stared back.

He hit an artery. The blood spurted freely, guided by his claws and fingers. He let it pool at the entrance, then backed up slowly in as straight a line as he could manage, until he was back up the hill where the girl waited. "Nitroglycerine blood?" she asked.

He let the blood soak into the earth at his feet. "Not exactly." He pulled his claws free and jammed both claws and fingers through the grass, into the rich black soil. The ground was alive with the fever of spring. He couldn't have picked a better time.

He sent his Quickening into the earth. Power poured down the line of blood, following the path of least resistance, gaining strength from the living grass--forming a ley line. When it reached the pool of blood at the entrance of the lab, it was a torrent.

It broke, rose, burned and dissipated, flattening the grass and forming holy ground.

Mortals called it with belief. Immortals forced it with blood. His teacher had told him there were only three other people in the world who knew that secret, and now that his other students were dead, Krycek supposed it was only the two of them.

He couldn't hear the screams through the sound-proof walls, but he heard the explosion and smiled. "I'm not exactly human," he told the girl.

Half the building imploded in a rush of blue flame.

"What really gets me," he said, "is that when I was captive, the head researcher was one of us. One like me. You'd think that he'd...." Krycek shrugged. "Care."

"Get real. Nobody cares about anybody," she said.

Dr. Fold was like ice inside. He had chilled down Cory's exuberance and fed off Oleg's blood lust--and tapped into the terrier determination that had let Alexei the orphan live so long. So here he was, Krycek the murderer, all of those men at once. He knew he loved people--loved his teacher, loved Amanda, loved Mac--but he couldn't remember... quite how it felt.

But if his teacher was right, he could fight that down. He could be anything, couldn't he? He could be himself. He just needed to get a little stronger, to heal a little more. He was still there, Alexei was, deep down inside. With strength he would find himself.

He pulled his hands from the earth. "I care," he said.

The circle of grass remained--one more mystery in the world, to be puzzled over by whoever found it. The power would dissipate into the living things. The holy ground would remain, or not. It didn't matter. The supersoldiers were gone, and they were the last of the alien army. He'd just saved the earth.

He'd thought it might feel more important than it did. "Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked the girl.

She shook her head.

"I can fix that. Come on." He grabbed the soldier's arm and dragged him toward the rental car. The girl followed.

Two witnesses. The Smoker would have a fit--but he was dead, and Krycek wasn't a Smoker.

Krycek tossed his cigarettes into the weeds before leaving.

"Sure I know Mulder," said Elaine Mosgrove, head Watcher for the Eastern Seaboard. "He's like catnip for Immortals. First that English cop, Phoebe Green, then Pendrell, and we suspect Krycek too."

"Krycek's a confirm. We have him listed as Cory Raines, but--well, I'll explain that later. He was just here visiting MacLeod and Mulder followed him."

"Does Mulder know?"

"He saw Raines shot in the head a few weeks ago."

Elaine sighed. "Hell."

"I think we might be able to turn this to our advantage," Joe said, leaning back in his chair.

"You think--wait, you think he might be Watcher material? No way, Joe! This guy's a nut! He's in the news all the time talking about aliens and conspiracies."

"We're a conspiracy," Joe pointed out. "Maybe he's not so nutty."

Elaine made an irritated noise. "My point isn't the nuttiness of what he's saying, it's that he's in the news. Christine Salzer wasn't enough for you?"

"He's looking for someone who believes him. He came into the bar, Elaine--you should have seen him when I didn't blow him off. Give him a whole organization of people who believe him and I bet we could keep his mouth shut to the outside. And look," he said, stabbing his pen against his notes, "he tracked Raines to MacLeod from scratch. What could he do with our resources?"

"Hm." Elaine didn't sound as skeptical.

"Set him to finding Wallace the Hermit?" Joe tapped his pen. "Set him to figuring out what Methos did to our files?"

He heard a crash in the background. "How soon can you be here?"

Joe grinned. "Tomorrow."

Before Amanda left, she whispered into Duncan's ear that she was going to move the Stone, and she wasn't telling either of them where it was going. Methos was right; Amanda was a wise woman.

He sat across the table from Methos, a pot of tea behind them. Methos was still quivering slightly from the Quickening. "You've been chatty this past week," Duncan said. "Got anything left to say?"

"Nothing springs to mind." Methos held his cup of tea between his hands. He had yet to take a sip. "How about you?"

Duncan shook his head, looking into his untouched tea.

"You're thinking, though. You're wondering. You want to know if you were a fool for trusting me in the bank or a fool for mistrusting me on the street."

"No."

"Or a fool for believing me that first time, when you guessed who I was... or you're wondering what it would be like to take my head." Duncan looked up, shaking his head. Methos smiled. "Always mistrust, MacLeod. It keeps you safe."

"I can't live like that. I don't want to be that safe." Duncan shook his head again. "The whole world isn't dog-eat-dog. There's room for people to go along and have a laugh together, even if they don't always come from the same place inside their heads."

"Like you and Amanda?" Methos smiled slightly down at his hands.

"Exactly like that." Duncan turned the cup around in his hands, watching the fragments of the leaves swirl out of sync.

"Like you and Alex, too."

Cory's sweet mouth... his hands, rough as Amanda's; his eyes, betraying the steel in his soul. He did love him. "Yeah."

"Like you and me." Methos leaned forward, setting his cup on the table.

Duncan tried to imagine life without ever seeing Methos again. It seemed like they were just getting to know each other--just starting to understand each other. "Yeah. Something like that," he said.

Some time between burying Thorfinn and pouring the tea, the sun had set. The street lights reflected between the charcoal skies and water, draining the color from both their skins. Methos leaned across the table into his space.

Duncan tilted his head, waiting for the kiss, but Methos stopped just short of his mouth. Sparks jumped between their lips.

Power snapped behind Methos' eyes like a flashbulb, blinding him. He could see the mark of the serpent lurking under Methos' skin in the negative image left behind. "I'm sorry," Methos whispered. His breath smelled of blood. "Wrong time. Wrong place."

Methos drew back, shrinking into the chair. Duncan took a deep breath. "But at least we have compatible noses," Methos said.

"Do we?" Duncan leaned back and snapped on a light.

Methos winced, but smiled. "It's a good sign. There's no kissing tragedy worse than incompatible noses."

Duncan put his feet up on the table, thinking that one over. "You may have a point."

"Of course I have a point. I've been kissing people since before Stonehenge was built." Methos curled his feet under him. "What's Amanda doing with the Methuselah Stone?"

"She didn't say, exactly. I assume she's hiding it."

"Bright girl."

"What would you have done if it had been me who needed the stone? Would you have let her give it to me?"

"Sure. But I would have had a plan."

"I had a plan," Duncan retorted.

"Yeah? Had the kryptonite in your pocket all along, did you?"

"Of course." Mostly his plan revolved around cutting the stone away from Methos and then hitting him over the head. Not exactly Shakespeare, but effective.

"Yeah." Methos was smiling, gently. "Shall I tell you what I tell all my students, Duncan? Shall I tell you my secret?"

"I'm not your student." He frowned and edited himself. "Tell me anyway."

Methos' mouth quirked. "I told it to Joe, once and he's not my student either, so I suppose there's precedent. The secret is that kryptonite won't work, because I'm not Superman. I'm not any kind of hero; I'm just a man. I've lived for a long, long time, and I've spent that time making mistakes--sometimes the same mistakes, over and over again; and I've spent it getting drunk and falling in love and wandering all over the world. And sometimes I've spent time doing things that are profoundly stupid when I look back on them, and sometimes I've just missed out on experiences that would have been transcendent.

"I know Socrates because he insulted me once for being such a barbarian. I was crucified in Judea for thievery, and that's as close to godhood as I've ever gotten. I've never invented anything; I've never created anything worth mentioning. And during all this time as I've walked around, I've heard stories of heroes and villains and epic battles, and the only time I've ever seen them is when they trampled me into the mud. I'm the world's most ordinary man."

Duncan stared at him.

"That's my secret," Methos said.

"But you are a legend," Duncan said. "For being the oldest--and for being one of the Horsemen."

"There are stories people tell, and then there is the truth. Methos is a legend because people want me to be--none of the legends are about anything I've ever actually done. And the Horsemen were a legend simply because we did it so long! Because grandchildren were seeing the monsters their grandfathers told them about. Once a generation, Kronos would find me or I would find him and fetch the others and we'd ride out and raid a few villages. Then we'd split up again, because we got bored. There's a reason that 'mythical' is a synonym for untrue."

"Why tell me this?" Duncan asked.

"Because I rode with a hero once before, and I saw him die a hero's death." Methos leaned back in his chair, looking at his hands, and a shadow crossed his face; he looked back at Duncan and his eyes were haunted. "But come to think of it, it wasn't worse than crucifixion, so there was no point to this at all. I'll be off, then," he said, and he stood.

"Where are you going?" Duncan asked.

Methos fetched his duffel bag from the closet. "To visit Alexa, first." He pulled his sweaters down from the shelf. "I could have saved her with the stone. It had that power. I can still feel it there, inside me."

"I'm sorry." His heart ached; Methos' pain was a palpable thing, encompassing both of them.

Methos tossed his dirty laundry into another bag and knotted it. "It would have been heroic, don't you think?" He stuffed the laundry bag into the duffel.

"Yes."

"Instead I held her hand as she died," Methos said, tossing in his socks and t-shirts. He folded up his laptop and slid it into the shoulder bag alongside a fat paperback and a leather-bound journal.

"And you showed her the time of her life beforehand. That's enough."

"Doesn't feel like enough." Methos looked into drawers and around the barge, then slipped on his coat. "Did I miss anything?"

"You've got your sword. You've got your head. Anything else I can mail to you." Duncan stood and embraced him.

"Right. You never mail heads. They're far too messy," Methos said. He patted Duncan's cheek as he pulled away.

Duncan walked him out. A speedboat zipped down the river, sending the water lapping against the barge; Methos tensed, but smiled as the boat sent white waves curling into the shore.

"Here--this is for Joe." Methos dug into a pocket of his bag and pulled out an envelope. "I'm going to get out of town for a while. Get some sun. I hear Australia is nice this time of year."

Duncan gave half a smile, and dropped his head. "Have a nice time." He headed back up the gangplank as Methos walked to his car.

"MacLeod! One last thing," Methos said.

Duncan turned.

"Did you think you were the only one dipped in the holy spring?"

Duncan's heart leapt. "Methos, wait!"

Methos stepped into his car. "We'll meet again, Highlander!" he called through the window as he drove away. Duncan glared after the car, arms spread, but Methos didn't turn around, or even look back, damn him.

He looked down at the envelope in his hand; he slipped it open. Inside was a picture of a bunch of punks, laughing and flipping off the camera. Methos stood in the middle with bright blue spikes cresting his head, just as advertised, holding a bottle of wine and grinning ear to ear.

"Compatible noses," Duncan muttered to himself, and stuck the picture in his pocket. He'd see the old man soon--he was sure of it.

The sun shone brightly through the dusty plexiglass windows of the plane. There lay the city, shiny and new.

Methos loved New York. He hadn't ever killed anyone there.

He felt Presence as he walked down the ramp. Alexei waited at the exit. Methos opened his arms, asking, "Did you finish your errands?"

Alex embraced him tightly. "Yes--all but one, and I'll finish that later. Thank you, Grandfather."

"Wonderful." Methos checked his watch. "I have an hour or so until my connection. Want some coffee?"

"Sure." Alex glanced around the concourse. "I can't go through security, but I know a back way..."

"Prepared, I see."

"Always." Alex led Methos through the teeming halls and then through a locked door that led into a silent concrete hall.

"Where are you off to next?" Methos asked, as Alex turned and shot him in the chest.

Methos staggered back against the wall. It was a bad shot--missed the heart--but his lung was filling with the blood of a ruptured vessel. He pushed himself back against the wall, desperate to stay upright, as Alex dropped the gun and pulled a machete from his jacket. "I'm sorry, Grandfather," he said, and genuine pain crossed his face, "but if killing you won't destroy me--I just can't be this fucking weak any more."

Oh, this couldn't be--he raised his rapidly numbing hands and fell against Alex. The machete bit into his arm, but he ignored it; his hands were around Alex's neck.

He focused into the pulse points. He sent the charge--sent his Quickening into Alex.

Methos slumped to the ground and died as the energy flowed over Alex.

He revived with a start. Alex was curled into a ball beside him, shaking with pain and weeping with emotion as the Quickening energy still marched over his skin. He'd be incapacitated for half an hour or more.

Lying with a smile? Treacherous little bastard. Methos was hard pressed to tell whether he or Kronos was the better student.

Methos was still strapped into his backpack. He slipped out, stripped off his perforated sweater, wiped the fresh blood off his chest and dumped it next to Alex. He pulled a spare shirt out of the bag. "I know you can hear me," he said to Alex. "Find yourself some holy ground and stay there until I forgive you. I trained you. I know you. I can take you."

Alex's teeth chattered as he tried to speak. "I'm not MacLeod," Methos said. "Loving someone doesn't stop me from killing someone. Keep that in mind."

Methos stepped over his body and back down the corridor.

Still alive.

He whistled an old riding song as he entered the concourse.

Scully opened her eyes, wondering what exactly woke her up. She didn't hear the baby. She checked the clock and it was nearly 3 AM.

Thunder, maybe. It was raining. She picked up her bathrobe and slipped out of her room to look in on Will just in case. Mulder stirred on the couch as she opened the door. "Scully?"

"Checking on Will," she said softly.

"Mm." He put his head back down. Scully opened the nursery door as lightning flashed outside.

Her eyes adjusted and she saw Krycek, with his skin glowing and his eyes glowing brighter, cradling William against his chest. "Krycek," she said, slapping on the light. "Put him down!"

She heard Mulder roll off the couch behind her. Krycek looked up from the baby and the glow of his skin gave way to a crackle of electricity. The claws of his prosthesis rested against William's throat. "Miss Scully," he said. "Don't be frightened."

"Oh, I'm not frightened. Put him down now!" Krycek looked down at William. Sparks crawled down his arm and over William's body. "What do you want?" she shouted. "What are you?"

Mulder's hands clutched her shoulders. Krycek's teeth were bared as he watched her. "I wanted to see if he looked like me," Krycek said softly.

She shook her head--she hadn't--oh, God, she didn't know what had happened. She was barren, her ovaries removed, and yet she'd had William... "He's not yours!" she said. That she knew. That was rock-solid.

"You get away from him!" Mulder shouted. Scully held him back, looking at the claws so close to William's tender flesh.

"You're not the only one who was experimented on, Miss Scully. They used my flesh to make this baby. I wanted to see." Krycek lifted William--who wasn't crying--and smiled down at him. "There's part of me in him, and you know, looking at him now, I don't resent that. He's not a robot--he has free will. He doesn't have to be what he's programmed to be, does he?"

Her stomach twisted and Krycek's claws were still at her baby's throat. "What are you talking about?"

Sparks leaped between their faces but William still didn't cry. "He does kind of look like me. I was going to kill him, but I changed my mind." Krycek kissed his forehead.

"You son of a bitch," Mulder growled. His hands knotted in Scully's bathrobe.

Krycek looked up. "I said I changed my mind, Mulder. What more do you want?"

"I want you to get out and leave us alone!" Scully said, near tears, eyes fixed on the sharp metal pressed to her baby's throat. Her heart hammered in her throat and tiny, sharp pains shot up her arms as her nails dug into the wood of the door frame.

The electricity crawling over Krycek's skin grounded itself in his eyes. He took a few steps forward and held his arm out, William's head cupped securely in his hand. William's eyes glowed softly up at Scully as she grabbed him from Krycek.

Krycek touched her cheek with his thumb and she jerked away. "Don't cry, Scully," he said. "It shakes my faith in God." He touched his thumb to his tongue.

Mulder shoved past her and tackled Krycek. They both tumbled; Krycek popped back to his feet with Mulder's arm twisted up behind his back and his claws at Mulder's face. "You'll never see me again," Krycek said. "I've done everything I came to do."

"Not a minute too soon," Scully said, cradling William's head under her chin. His little heart beat strong and steady; he was okay for now, except that he wasn't crying.

Mulder struggled and a trickle of blood slid down his face. Krycek shoved him onto his face and stepped back quickly, looking from him to Scully. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a PDA. "For Skinner," he said, tossing it down next to Mulder. "Tell him I'm out. Believe that I'm out."

Mulder lunged for him, but Krycek slipped out the window in a gust of wind and rain. "None of this will ever be over!" Mulder shouted into the storm.

William finally cried.

THE END.

All comments are welcome.