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"We had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime - mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench."
- Arlo Guthrie
"Alice's Restaurant"
Two men have numbers they don't understand in their hands and sometimes other people wander back and forth down the line. There are two rows of benches that go infinitely in both directions against two walls that go on forever. Those benches are empty, all of them. Left and right, up and down, they are deserted save for these two men, sitting exactly across from each other, on these benches, in an eternal hallway that would technically go everywhere - but still might not go anywhere.
It takes a very long time for the two to notice each other, perhaps. Strange the loss of time here, because one of them is Duncan MacLeod, a man who can measure long lengths of time with accuracy. But eventually the man who sits on the bench across from Duncan dares to speak to him.
"Hey, what's your number?" he asks. He's got graying hair, a kind of thin build, a handsome face and he's in the military, judging by the green khaki pants and the black teeshirt. When Duncan doesn't answer immediately, the man says, "I got 42."
Duncan looks down at the white tag in his hand.
"One million five hundred sixty eight thousand and five."
The man reconsiders his number with caution that is amusing. He eyes Duncan's tag.
"Wanna trade?" he asks.
Duncan cracks a smile. He might as well be polite. "I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod."
"General Jack O'Neill of the clan...uh...of the Air Force," Jack replies, looking just momentarily confused, but not entirely unhappy about that fact. "Whatcha in for?"
Duncan unbuttons the top of his dress shirt and gives Jack a brief flash of the tight red line across his throat, and pulls his collar back so that Jack can see it goes all the way around.
Jack gives a sympathetic hiss and says, "Ouch. I hear it's quick, though. So that's good. Take a look at this baby."
Duncan can't resist a smile when Jack lifts the blood-slicked, blood-shiny tee shirt and reveals his own wound, off to the center. It looks like it might have knicked a kidney. As is suitably masculine, Duncan gives an approving nod, showing his appreciation.
"I've died worse deaths. I don't know if it's permanent yet"
Jack cocks an eyebrow. "Really?"
"I've been here quite a few times," Duncan tells him. "This is death. This is the end."
"Well, seeing as how you're racking up the frequent flyer points, maybe not."
"I'm an Immortal."
"Or were, as the case may be."
"I can only die if someone takes my head."
"Huh. You know, I've known some people with that problem. You know, not dying. You didn't happen to have glowy eyes, booming voice when you were, you know, undead? Not dead?"
"Uh, I don't think so," Duncan says, blinking as though he might have missed something in the exchange. Glowing eyes?
"Didn't think so, but just checking. Can't be too careful," Jack says. Duncan just doesn't want to ask.
"You're in the military, right?" he guesses, pointing towards the boots and pants. "How did it happen?"
"Actually, I'm not sure, but it was very quiet and I find that quite odd. I expected there to be screaming. Possibly gunfire," Jack says, eyebrows lowering in a way that makes him look like a caveman. "Do you know who...you know...schnnnt?" He makes a motion with one finger across his throat. His lack of reverence is comforting, as is the absolute uselessness of hiding anything. He can tell this man everything or nothing. Who's he going to tell?
Duncan can rest on his bench and stare into brightness either way. He cannot see the world, and he doesn't have to. That is always a comfort when he comes here. Nothing is his problem anymore, for a while. He wishes he could ask Amanda or Methos what they do here, what they find comforting about this temporary death, but he won't remember it when goes back, gasping and shocked back to life by something that, 400 hundred years on, he still doesn't quite understand.
"He didn't have a choice," Duncan tells Jack. "I forced him to."
"Him?"
"His name is Methos, he was...a friend. He couldn't do it while I was alive," Duncan says.
"Not that it's my business, because you know, we just met. But I'm still not clear on the head taking part. I mean, you guys were friends. Unless friends is code for something else. Like, you know, mortal enemies."
"It's complicated."
"Hey, I got fourty-two and you got one million and something something. Does it look like we're under a deadline here?"
"Deadline?" he inquires, a single eyebrow pitched in amusement.
"Yeah, I thought about going with another word, but I thought to myself, why not. If you can't be yourself in the afterlife, where can you?"
Duncan can't help but laugh. "Touche. When Immortals fight, the winner takes his enemy's power and strength. Someone found us, someone neither of us could defeat separately. He offered his head to me, and I offered him mine."
"So, you, what? Rock paper scissored for it?"
"Coin toss," he admits. "I cheated."
"You cheated so you would lose?"
"He offered me his head once already, a few years ago. I couldn't take then, either."
"Sounds like generous guy."
"Not really," Duncan tells him, with a fond smile, thinking on all the things that Methos is not. Generous, kind, and warm are not among them. Easily understood is not, either. "He's got to find somewhere else to get free beer from now. I used to pretend to hate it when he dropped in without warning."
Suddenly, Jack leans forward, hands on knees, as if they're about to share a secret. "Did you love him?" he asks, in a very hush-hush voice.
Duncan takes a moment to consider this, and finds the simple truth of it in his mind. In life, he had been unable to fish around for in all the confused emotions that Methos dredged up.
"Yes, I did. I do. When I was a boy, in Scotland, I had this strange idea in my mind that to go to heaven, you had to either die for love or honor. That's why I cheated. I have to be the one to die this time. Methos doesn't love me. I think he wants to, but he can't. I have to hope he finds honor."
"How do you know he doesn't love you?"
"If he loved me, we would have found another way. I think I'm relieved. Usually, the people I love die so quickly. I could never marry. The women I proposed to all died. All of them."
"I had a son who died," Jack says, softly. "When they let me off this bench, I'm going to find him. God, I hope they didn't stick him on some damn bench in here. Maybe it's different for kids. I mean, they wouldn't just stick him out here, all alone, with some stranger. The universe isn't that cruel, right?"
"I think so."
Jack shakes his head. "Lucky you, because I don't. I think they sat him out here on one of these damn benches and there's some stranger sitting there, listening to him tell them how he blew his head off with *my* gun." With disgust and anger, he throws his tag down and grabs his hair, bending double.
"I'm sorry," is all that Duncan can offer the man. He does not think he's allowed to cross the hallway and he wouldn't know how to offer comfort if he was.
"What happens if you don't die for love or honor?" he asks, looking up.
"I don't know."
Jack takes a big breath and lets it out. "Thank god it's me this time. I didn't have to see Daniel go, that's something."
"Daniel?"
"He's my Methos," Jack replies.
By the tone in Jack's voice, by the way that Jack's relief is visceral even in this completely non-visceral place, Duncan can tell that it's a completely accurate translation.
"Are you sure you don't remember what happened?"
Jack sits up and leans against the wall, shakes his head. Duncan isn't sure where to go in the absence of an answer to that, so he looks down at his number, waits. Retreats to good memories and does not emerge until he's interrupted by slow, heavy footsteps.
He looks up and sees that Jack has closed his eyes. In front of him is a man who is dripping blood from a chest wound that should have him on the ground.
"Jack!" the man shouts. Jack does not react. "Jack!"
"Jack!" Duncan calls.
It shocks Jack into opening his eyes. He looks up and says, head tilted, "Daniel."
"Hey, Jack," Daniel says, softly. He strips off his glasses. "I think I got your number."
Daniel holds up a white tag that reads 42 on it.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Jack asks, and stands up. He reaches out and touches Daniel. "You're...you're not even old. How long has it been?"
Daniel bends double. "I don't care. Can I sit?"
"I don't know," Jack says. "Can you?"
"I don't know either," Daniel says.
"Huh?" Jack asks.
"What?" Daniel echoes his confusion.
Duncan can't help but smile. Yep, definitely some other version of him and Methos. Witty banter included.
"He isn't quite dead yet, Jack," Duncan supplies, hoping it will be helpful.
"Oh," Jack says, looking at Daniel. "Then get outta here. You shouldn't be here. You're only what..."
Daniel stands up and says, "Thirty -" and then coughs to disguise the last number.
"Spring chicken," Jack grumbles. "Go back. Get out of here."
Daniel looks back down the hall like he might. "I don't know. I'm kind of tired. Mind if I sit for a while?"
"Yes I mind! I realize that you wouldn't take an order from me if your life depended on it, but I am ordering you to get out of here, Daniel. Now! And don't come back until you're...older than I was when I died. I expect to see gray hairs."
"Jack-"
"Gray, Daniel! White, even. I see one colored hair on your head and I swear to god!"
"How did you die?" Daniel asks, narrowing his eyes at Jack.
"I don't know. I was kind of hoping you would tell me that before you went."
"You're dead?" Daniel asks, in a terrible panic. He turns to Duncan. "How long has he been here?"
"We arrived at the same time, I think," Duncan answers and knows that it will be not at all helpful. "Time doesn't count here." He smiles at them as if to say 'yes, I know I'm not being useful and I'm kind of enjoying it'.
"It doesn't matter. You are not doing this, Daniel. You are not dying young again. You're gonna go back down there and you're gonna be a pain in the ass to every stupid colonel and Goa'uld and whatever else."
"What about you?" Daniel asks.
"I'll be here when you come back," Jack replies. "Now go."
"Come on, go with me," Daniel pleads, looking down at his number with a little bit of desperation.
"No, Daniel. Go!"
Jack goes so far as to kick at Daniel like a dog who won't abandon a person who's fed it.
"Why?"
"It's better this way," Jack explains, firmly.
"How?" Daniel screams, and gestures wildly and even hops in an angry circle.
Duncan understands the way love can make you want to do that. He finds himself wishing he had been so expressive and direct with Methos, that he'd been able to show the ways he wanted to keep the man around and close and intimate as directly as he had shown his disapproval and anger and betrayal at finding out that Methos, too, had a past and a lot of it was deeply ugly.
What Duncan does not understand is why he felt so betrayed. In this place of clarity, the reasons become lost. Perhaps it was that he felt he deserved to know before hand, to know all about Methos.
"Because this way I never have to see you die," Jack says, grabbing Daniel so that he'll stay in one place. "I've done that once, and I can't do it again. *Can't*, Daniel. So go."
"No! Jack, just come back with me. No more dying. You get to go first, but next time. Not this time," Daniel pleads.
Jack shakes his head and lets out a big breath.
Duncan, at that moment, hates Jack a little for wasting what he has. Because he knows that Methos will not show up, trying to drag him back by the collar. Because he knows that Jack is lucky enough to be able to say that the person he's willing to die for is willing to die for him.
"It's another chance to die for the right reason," Duncan says. "Love or honor."
Jack frowns. "I can't."
Daniel pulls Jack in close and kisses him fierce. "Yes you can. I'm giving the orders, and we're going."
"It's always the same damn thing with you," Jack says, putting a hand to the side of Daniel's face and smiling.
Duncan is not sure when they leave, but he does realize eventually that they are no longer there. For the first time in all his deaths, his envies and he hates and his mourns being alone here. He hopes it isn't permanent, that his punishment is not to watch, for all eternity, people coming and going, getting what they want while he sits there, an eternal voyeur.
Then there's a very wicked little snicker.
"Very melodramatic, but that is your style," says Methos. "Enjoy the show?"
Duncan looks to his right and sees Methos leaning against the wall, hands in his coat pocket.
"Methos?" Duncan asks. Panic flashes inside of his chest, quickening a heart that isn't there. "How did you die?"
Methos lowers himself onto the bench with a smile. "Long story, tell you later. Sorry it took me so long to get here. I was off visiting. You do know that you can wander around. No, of course not. I forgot, you make up rules. I was off visiting Cleopatra. Did you know that -"
"Happy you stopped by. Enjoy your afterlife," Duncan replies, looking away angrily, turning his tag over in his hand. Not all the clarity in the universe can pierce through the pain of knowing that he died for love and was not loved in return.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Methos asks.
"I offer you my head to save your life and you only meander by once you're bored with Cleopatra," Duncan replies.
Methos rolls his eyes. "Excuse me for taking advantage of situation. I didn't realize there was a required brooding period. Why do you think I'm here?"
"I assume you lost."
Methos opens his coat and reveals a chest stained with blood. "No."
"What?"
With a sigh, he sprawls - so very Methos-like and enraging and endearing all at once. "Did you really think I was going to take your head?"
"That's what we agreed!"
"You are such a pain in the ass. I offered you my head, MacLeod. How many people in my five thousand years do you think I've made that offer to? It's a short list, just one person. Rhymes with Buh-cloud. It wasn't about winning. I thought you understood that."
"Then why did you offer it to me?"
"Because if I have to live inside of someone for eternity, I want it to be you," Methos says, in a quiet and devastatingly smooth voice that leaves Duncan feeling ashen and shaken. Why didn't he see this in life, why can't he just know truth when he breathes? Methos is just a guy. Old or not, just a guy. With his own hang up and jealousies and assumptions and pain. If he doesn't show his love in the ways that Duncan understands best, that doesn't mean he isn't showing them.
"Methos, I...."
Duncan stops searching for the words, because they're pointless and he's dead for the moment, so he settles for standing up, taking the few steps to Methos's bench and sitting down next to him.
"Careful, MacLeod, you're breaking the rules."
"I live dangerously," Duncan replies. "So why are you dead?"
"It's a long story, and don't bitch about it when you wake up in the morgue. I figured it was just easier to shut you up than argue with you," Methos tells him. "You are such a pain in the ass."
Duncan smiles as they fade back into life.
-END-