Explanations, Disclaimers, Plea for Feedback:
You know, this story kind of makes me wince now, something like two
years after I first wrote it. It's not quite as bad as some of
my high-school stuff, but.... Oh well. Live and learn, write? I'll leave
it up anyway. That way y'all can see where I have (and haven't ;-) improved
over the past couple of years....
This is essentially a Methos-pov rant about MacLeod, set right after
the whole Horsemen mess. It's not exactly fair to MacLeod; but then
Methos wasn't really in the mood to be fair to MacLeod directly following
that mess. He's not in the mood to be fair to anybody, actually.
He's pissed at him, basically. It's a lot of stuff Methos would never
actively say to Mac, particularly once he's cooled down a tad;
but might very well think, once or twice. It's also the first fanfic
I ever wrote, so can therefore be directly blamed entirely on Methos.
They don't belong to me. Methos just showed up on my doorstep one night
when I was feeling particularly vulnerable to a sarcastic, touchy muse.
I let him stay for a beer, and before I knew it I had yet another bugger
telling me to start writing, NOW. The song lyrics are Ani DiFranco's,
off her album Not a Pretty Girl, and used without permission.
Hour Follows Hour
hour follows hour like water follows water
everything is governed by the rule of one thing
leads to another
you can't really place blame
cuz blame is much too messy
some was bound to get on you
while you were trying to put it on me
Damn you, MacLeod. Is it so easy, then, to live in black and white? In a world of yes and no, true and false, is and is not. A world of straight roads and sharp edges. Is it really so simple to live so long with blinders on that you forget there might be something else, a world out beyond your narrow vision of right and wrong? To live so many years beneath a blindfold that you forget to even try to pull it off?
You wanted me to tell you, is that it? And then, everything would have been alright? By the way, three thousand years before you were born, I and my brothers were the scourge of two continents. See how simple it is to slip into normal conversation? I had thought you were my friend, Mac. I didn't realise entrance into your little clan was conditional on behaviour three thousand years past. Stupid of me, I admit. I should have known better, than to let myself care so deeply. So I have only myself to blame, I suppose. As usual. The sins of the past can never stay there it seems.
don't fool yourself
into thinking things are simple
nobody's lying and still the stories don't line up
why do you try to hold on to
what you'll never get a hold on
you wouldn't try to put the ocean in a paper cup
You see, MacLeod -- except of course you don't. Silly of me, I expect. Tell me, how do I explain a man that cannot exist, in your blind black and white world? Without shades of grey, I cannot exist. There is so much, MacLeod, so much of history in me. I have lived through the most brutal periods of so-called 'civilization', Highlander, and I wasn't always hiding in the shadows. I'm just a guy, Mac, remember that? I've reached heights of evil and depths of good that you can barely imagine, done things that I cannot believe, even now. And after all of it, after all the joy and the pain and the dreams, I'm still just a guy. I've saved lives and taken them; destroyed desert tribes for the thrill of it, the sheer bloodlust of riding with my brothers; and I've risked everything, my life and my sanity and my freedom, because I'd seen too much of death to bear even one more if I could prevent it. Committed murder and rape in the name of survival, and foolish acts of heroism in the face of chaos. Occasionally at the same time. And how do you colour that, in black and white?
And what business was it of yours, anyway? When did what I was, what I did, ever touch you? It was thousands of years before you were raised to nurture and protect! In a world so different, so crazy and violent and hungry, that it's beyond your comprehension, Highlander, beyond even your imagination. Yet you demand I explain the inexplicable.
My past reached out to grab me again, and you were caught in the middle, and I am sorry for that, truly sorry. But it does not give you the right to judge me, you know. It does not give you the right to look at one person's view of who I was thousands of years ago and condemn who I am now. No matter how heart-rending her story, how deeply she feels the so-called injustice, it is not your wrong to judge, MacLeod, let alone to avenge. No matter I threw my past in your face myself; you have no right to decide what I am worth. None at all.
hour follows hour like water in a river
and from one to the next we don't know
what each hour will deliver
we just call it like we see it
we call it out loud as we can
and then afterwards we call it all water
over the dam
Is it a sob-story you want, MacLeod? I could tell you tales that would make Cassandra's look like a wet dream. And none of it is important, you know? You do the best you know how in the time you live it; there is no way to see the future, Highlander. No way to know if you will be alive tomorrow, let alone what it is that will come to haunt your dreams a thousand years from now. No way to know that it is the acts of horror you commit, rather than the ones you suffer, that will live in your nightmares. And when it comes down to it, it is who you are now, that matters. Not what you did three thousand years ago, not what was done to you a thousand years before that. Or since, for that matter. Today is important; how you act and who you are and what you say. What has been is past and what has yet to come will come regardless. Tell me, MacLeod, what is the point in living forever if you can never be allowed to change?
and maybe the moral high ground
isn't as high as it seems
maybe we are both good people
who've done some bad things
What do you need, Mac? A line, nice and neat, dividing what was from what is, what I did from who I am? A light quickening, a 'bad' Methos and a 'good' Methos, and then I can be your friend again, like Darius was? Is that what you want? Not an explanation, not change, just a miracle. Well I can tell you, there was nothing like that. That was me, MacLeod, not some evil version of me vanquished by a magic spring or a strong quickening, but the same me you see sitting here now, only three thousand years different. The only thing that changed me, 'cured' me, was time. There is no line, no point you can hold to and say 'that Methos was evil, this Methos is not'. Nothing so tidy.
Do you remember Culloden, MacLeod? Do you remember the hatred, the anger, the need for revenge, for blood? The deaths of men you were so sure were not innocent. And do you remember Darius, and Amanda, and Connor? The friends you had, the people you knew that dragged you out of darkness and back into the white.
I remember Culloden. A thousand Cullodens. Life in the desert was harsh; genocide was not at all uncommon. Ofttimes, it was kill or be killed.
It's not the same, I'm sure. Like Vietnam, for Joe, is not the same. But what you don't see, in your tiny black and white world, is the path through the shadows that places like Culloden will take you, if you're hurt enough, or unlucky enough. I remember the man I met then. You knew him, MacLeod. In fact, you killed him.
we make our own gravity
to give weight to things
and then things fall and they break
and gravity sings
we can only hold so much is what i figure
we try and keep our eye on the big picture
and the picture keeps getting bigger
It was three thousand years ago, MacLeod. Three thousand fucking years. Do you know how long that is? How many days, how many hours, how many seconds? Even I don't, and I lived it.
Do you think it's easy, knowing what I was, knowing what I must guard against ever being again? It was three thousand years ago, and still there are days I glance in a pool of water and see Death looking back at me. And I've paid for it, MacLeod, and more. In five thousand years, I've paid for a lot of things. Done a lot of things.
Three thousand fucking years. Was I so wrong, MacLeod, in wanting to leave it in the past, where it belongs? Was I so wrong, to want to forget, just for a while, that it was only by luck that I have survived so long?
too much is how i love you
but too well is how i know you
i've got nothing to prove this time
just something to show you
i guess i just wanted you to see
that it was all worth it to me
You know what's so stupid? I'd do this again. I will, someday, with another young innocent. I'll let myself believe, let myself care, let myself get hurt again. I've done it before, so many times before; and still I keep thinking that this time will be different. That this one will not presume to judge; will not look at me and see only the shadow of a man three thousand years gone. Knowing that they will, of course. How could they not? Cassandra will see to it, as always.
I'd even do it again with you. Might, if you manage to unbend enough. Knowing the next time some sordid piece of my past comes crawling out, this whole scenario will repeat. Knowing you won't hear, you won't see, you won't forget. Knowing you won't even try. I'd do it again -- how foolish can you get?
It must have been worth it, then. The past few years -- worth it, to me. Worth what you're doing to me now, to have had what's gone before. I guess that's all I really want to say. All I really expect you to hear. Nice knowing you, MacLeod. Live. Grow stronger. Remember, you can always fight another day. Survive, MacLeod. Survive.
I will.
Let tarsh know you read her story! tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie.c om
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