Work Text:
You.
You are the great god, fain and fey. You are vicious and victorious, with laurels streaming and lava flowing. You are the one, the only, who thundered down from above the valleys. Well poisoner, well wisher, the great god, fain and fey.
You are Methos, and you are dying.
You are lying, in cooling mud, and your conqueror, the sun, beats down from above. You hear the rays like drum beats heralding your death. They do not pierce your skin, but yet you bleed, and you watch the life mingle with the earth beneath, and you laugh, and that is your death, the fifth since Seacouver.
On the airplane, you recline, and you dream of drums and dirt and Duncan MacLeod.
He is sword and steel, flesh and bone. He is a creature of your dreams like none before. He is the challenger and the champion, the blow and the blood. He will wrap you up like old clothes and you will mend.
He will help you, your champion. He will hurt you and break you and shatter you into pieces, you, the great god, fain and fey, and you will laugh at his tears because he knows not how nor why, but you need him. He will take your hand and you two, twain and twinned, will walk together along the sea.
You are Methos. You are usurper, usurer, murderer. You are metal and minds, sharp and stinging, lord and master. Never peaceful, never pacifist, never perfect. You are Methos of vines and vanity. And you are dying.
It is a hill where there will one day be a war memorial. You can see the hazy outline of possibilities, a grand stone obelisk daring the world to forget.
They will. Forget. You will. Forget. And if man is nothing more than the sum of his memories, then you are Methos, made of myth and mystery and murder. If man is nothing more than the sum of his memories, then you are a knife-stabbed cloth, full of torn threads and ripped edges, and the gaping hole that is your past.
On the airplane, you recline, and you dream of sewing needles and Seacouver and Duncan MacLeod.
It is a place with no name now. Once, you knew it as home, but you do not remember this. You fought a war here once and you died upon this hillside, once, and now again, but you do not remember this. You remember this: a fall from a horse, a broken back, pain. You will die.
You are Methos and you are dying.
Grass, green and dew-dampened, and you live again, live to walk and to run and to laugh, and you are Methos, but still you are dying.
Fleet of foot and arrayed in armor, you stood and fought, to the bitter end. You and he, veterans of a thousand wars, this was not the first battle for either of you. The battlefield, the living room, oh, but you will not someday forget this like you forgot your first love, because you are dying, and you are Methos, and this will end.
He is strength and resolve, risk and silence. He is drumbeats, low and primal, throbbing in your blood, your brain, your heart. He is clansman and challenger. He is in love.
You are Methos, the great god, fain and fey. You are mischief and methods and mystery. You are knives in the dark and bitter kisses and the courage of centuries, and you are leaving.
In the airport, you choose a direction. You are not going to, you are fleeing from. The destination is never worse. It will not be Duncan's arms to greet you, and it will not be Duncan's eyes to drive you away. The allure of the unknown is preferred to the ache of the known.
You are Methos, sly and sorrow, and you mark those that mark your path, but you do not dance here. They will follow and they will follow, perhaps to the end, and they will know that you are Methos, secrets and strife.
You.
Danger and disappointment, with the only affirmation left your name, you are Methos, and you may already be dead.