And I wondered, less idly, whether it would.

And in the meantime, Joe stood there on the other side of the bar, watching me with compassion showing deep within his eyes. I had the feeling that he saw right through me. That he always had.

"Well, Joe, much as I'd like to stay and chat...." I leant down to pick up my coat, automatically checking the sword was still secure in the lining as I lifted it. Joe still had Mac's sword, which meant the Highlander was walking around Paris swordless, now. At least in the monastery he'd been relatively safe from marauding immortals, but now--

I cut that train of thought off, sharply. Duncan MacLeod and his safety, or lack thereof, was no longer my concern. Hadn't been for some time now, if ever it had.

What was it I said to Joe after the Watcher mess? "Maybe if I tell myself that often enough, I may even come to believe it...."

Joe's snort takes me by surprise; I hadn't realised I'd spoken that aloud. "Yeah, right," he tells me, wiping diligently at the bar. "And if you care to look out the window, there'll be a pig flying by any minute now."

I send him my best glare, but I can't help but laugh, too. It is rather a pathetic predicament I find myself in now, after all. Pining for a man who wants nothing to do with me, except maybe my sword as a suicide option. Might as well get something out of it, even if it is only a second or two's amusement.

"Goodbye, Joe. I'll be sure to stop by sometime." I drain my glass, set it on the bar, and head for the door. The sound it makes as it clicks into place behind me is ominous and dreary, and I shiver, caught by a certainty of doom. One way or another, this return means far more to me than I'm comfortable with, and there is no way I'll pass unaffected through this reunion. There is too much history floating on the wind, the air between us too murky. Too many sparks, too much need, too much love still fresh in memory. On my side, at least. On Mac's--who knows what's inside his head, these days? Certainly not me.

I pause in the street, torn between heading for my flat and disappearing into the night. An immortal signature worming its way onto the edge of my awareness takes the decision away from me, and I slip off down the street, into the night, away from my apartment--and, not incidentally, the other's buzz. Most likely MacLeod's; I'm glad Joe at least warned me before I ran willy-nilly into him. A chance meeting is not something I'm in the mood for, not now, not tonight, not when the Paris night is stirring up memories I packed away for good last year. Not when the gulf between what was and what is is so gapingly painful.

The night is warm, sultry, spring in the air and warmth on the wind. So the chill winding it's way through my bones can't be natural. A side-effect of the turmoil eating it's way through my body, no doubt. So hugging my coat tighter about me isn't going to achieve anything except to press my sword deeper into my side, but I do it nonetheless. I feel lost, abandoned, alone... ridiculous. He's been gone a year already, anything between us over a good six months before that. So why does it take this particular impending encounter to make me feel so ... so ... desolate?

I walk faster, but it isn't enough. It's never enough, when you carry your nightmares bound so tightly to your person. Doesn't stop me from trying, though... faster. Not quite running, I've still got that much control over my reactions tonight. But, oh, do I want to....

As if I didn't know why.... I can't even hide from myself anymore. The pity in Joe's eyes burned through the illusions I'd spent the last year so busily crafting.

Ah, what the hell. Motion feels so good tonight, the burn of muscle and tissue as I speed through the night blurs the thoughts before they can form. It's almost enough to stop the memories. The sheer physical rush, pounding against the pavement, leaning into the wind, driving through the night. A rhythm emerges and I lose myself in its beat, in the burn of breath through my lungs, of blood through my ears, of concrete against my feet. Sensation overload, and for an instant--it's almost enough.

It doesn't last. It never does. The burn fades, my breathing eases, the rhythm continues but it's no longer loud enough to block out thought. No longer all-consuming enough to control memory, fantasy, dream. My second wind has arrived, and I know from experience I've already come as close to not thinking as I'll manage this way. I could run all night, and not get anywhere. More speed would help, but no matter how much effort I put in, it's physically impossible to run fast enough to escape my demons. I've tried enough times before.

Not on foot.... A car, though--no physical exertion required, not really, but sheer speed can occasionally take the place of physical effort. If I can find a road that's deserted enough, that's twisted enough, and jack up the speed--get my attention caught in the reflexes necessary to stay on the road--maybe. Just maybe. Is not thinking really so much to ask?

I've been running for longer than I thought. This is not a part of Paris I come to often. Too far from home to return and fetch my car; I'm too impatient to wait, tonight. I want speed, and I want it now.

Well, it's been a while since I've hotwired a car, but I remember the technique. Just so long as its got plenty of petrol, and plenty of speed. And with luck I can keep it down long enough to get free and clear out of town, finding a country road with no traffic this time of night should be easy enough. Speed, ye gods. I remember when it would have taken half a day to travel this far. More, if you happened to be on foot. And now, an hour gone, and the lights of Paris are falling behind me. Off into the night, I don't know where I'm going, and I really don't care. Speed is the purpose, after all, not direction or destination. I'll return in the morning, I suppose. When the sun returns the light, with the darkness no longer there to hide the memories; by then I'll likely have given this quest up as hopeless, be resigned to reliving the memories I can't fight any longer . Until then--speed, and darkness, and the pathetic little hope that maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this time I'll be able to stop my brain, just this once. Quit thinking, quit feeling, quit reacting--and just be.

I guess I knew that if I stayed in Paris this day was bound to come. That sooner or later, MacLeod would come back to town, pick up his old life where he left off. And that if I was here, there would be no way to avoid this meeting, not for long.

I just hadn't realised it would hurt so much.

I thought I was ready for this. Thought I'd dealt with it, for now at least. Tied off the emotions and shut them away, walled them off beneath a mountain of pain and history. But the wall has turned out to be made of paper, now that he's shown up again. Rice-paper at that; almost translucent and torn apart at a breath. It's been centuries since I last fooled myself so thoroughly.

That was for love, too. I should have known better. By now, one would really have thought I would have learnt.

Add on the acceleration, just a little. Yeah, speed and oblivion--tempting but useless. Drive fast enough, still I'll never outrun my own mind. I should know--it's not like I've never tried before.

The anger between us, all the pain--I counted on that, once, to keep me going when the world turned to hell. Counted on it, rested against it, built on it. Allowed it to support me when all I wanted was to sink into his arms again and let him hold me safe. When the disappointment in his eyes assured me that it would be a mistake to try it. When the confusion and tears boiled so close to his surface I thought he would hit me, if I so much as breathed too close to him.

It worked, too. It helped me to stand there and listen to all his sanctimonious bullshit. Let me stand there and ignore the past we had just killed together, in favour of the future that we'd mortally wounded between us. Appropriate the past should finally be dead, and at his hands--it takes a ghost to haunt properly, after all.

Oblivion--the other part of the equation. It's very tempting, to simply not make the next turn. To choose not to turn the wheel, and smack face-first into that tree up there at 160 kilometres per hour. To gain oblivion, in an instant of noise and light and screaming metal.

Of course, it wouldn't last. Not unless I got lucky, and managed to get myself accidentally beheaded in the crash.

I'll never get that lucky.

Oh, who am I fooling? I don't want to die, not truly. I never have. I just want--peace. A moment in which I can just be, and not have to think or feel or regret. Just one moment during which I can be safe. One more moment like those I found in his arms, once upon a time, in a fairy tale far, far away.

Anger so strong it could have turned to hate so easily, in both of us. Except for all the times he almost touched me. All his abortive gestures, all the times his hand reached, and then stopped, and then flinched back again--and it hurt, so much, to see that in him. From him. Tore into my soul in ways I had forgotten anything could, ripped me apart and left me bleeding on the concrete at his feet. And he'd ramble on, oblivious. Too caught up in his own pain to see what he was doing to me, maybe even too tired himself to care.

But it was those times that saved me, I think. The times he almost forgot, almost accepted, and then threw it back in my face, louder than a slap, sharper than his sword. The pain of those rejections, and there were many of them--that's all that kept me from hating him, then.

Because if I cared enough for him to be able to hurt me that badly, at least I still cared at all. After Kronos resurrected the shadow of Death still within me--I was grateful for that much. If I cared, I felt. If I felt, I lived. If I lived, I did more than just merely survive. I meant it when I told him I wanted to live. Word for word, exactly. Not just survive--live.

I wonder, does he understand the difference those words hold for me?

And if he hurt enough to hurt me like that, in punishment or retaliation or confusion--at least it wasn't indifference.

A tableau of sorts, balanced in anger and pain and deeply buried but undeniable love, and if we both wanted more, neither of us was prepared to let go enough to allow it. We set our own fate then, as later. We always have.

A fragile balance. And it didn't take much to tip it. I spent months after Bordeaux in a distant orbit. Never coming too close, never going too far. Too full of pain, both of us, to tumble back into bed. I concentrated instead on trying to save the friendship--and failed miserably at that, too. And then one day it was just enough. Too many rejections, too many times watching the same confusion and distaste come creeping through his gaze. I didn't hate him, couldn't hate him--but I couldn't stay and let him continue to rip me apart at every turn, either. I never was very good at playing the martyr.

Except--he figured it out, somehow. Knew the balance had been tipped, if not how or why or where. Hell, I didn't know how or why or where. Just that it was enough, that the next time would be the proverbial straw. That I had to get the hell out, before I ended up losing more than my happiness to his strange version of penance.

But he came, when I was bidding Joe farewell. Walked into the bar, came straight up to me, and the first thing out of his mouth was "Don't leave." I ignored it, of course. Too little too late, I told myself; and let my mind instead try to puzzle out how he'd found out as I drained my beer and stood to go.

His hand reached out, and I flinched, waiting for the realisation to come over his face, waiting for the gesture to be aborted, to be turned into something else. Instead, it touched my shoulder, and I froze, held immobile by memory and hope and fear, and hating myself equally for all of them. The sheer weight of his presence weighed me down, and I found I couldn't move, couldn't shrug off the touch, could barely even breathe.

"Methos...." his voice was soft, hesitant, and for the first time in far too many days my name on his lips held no hint of uncertainty. He bit his lip and widened his eyes in a silent plea.

I held my flinch deep inside, where I hoped he wouldn't see it. Barricaded my heart with the anger bleeding from my soul, let this latest wall stand visible and solid in my eyes. Straightened my spine and glared a silent declaration even he should be able to read, ignoring the pain that tore through my soul. If he wanted something from me, he'd have to tell me. And he'd have to give me a bloody good reason for it. I'd decided I was done being torn apart on his conscience. While my heart has been shredded more times than I can count--I couldn't let him do that to my soul. Couldn't let anybody do that to my soul, not even me. Never again.

The hand on my shoulder clenched convulsively tighter, the outward signal of message received. His eyes glistened, large and liquid and deceptively innocent. He chewed his lip, teeth worrying his flesh the way his mind worried his words. Absently, his thumb snuck beneath the collar of my jumper and began to stroke the skin there, the repetitive caress the only unplanned part of this charade. One glance and the forethought behind the rest of it is obvious to anyone who's slept with him, and I wondered, offhand, how long he'd been thinking of it. But that thumb--it's far too clear, that he doesn't know he's doing it. And I can't help but wonder, if he did--would he stop?

He'd already torn my heart to ribbons. So how in hell could I feel it crack?

That touch--that thumb, stroking so lightly over my skin--that was my undoing. He stood there, through the whole of that earnest, predictable, terrible conversation, and undermined the foundations of my resistance with that one unconscious touch. I felt it in every square inch of my body. My fingers, my wrists, my chest. While he stood there and told me of his confusion, of his hurt and his loss and the mess I had made of his convictions, his thumb stroked across my stomach, traced the outline of my shoulderblades, brushed across the soles of my feet. No matter that he only truly rubbed across my collarbone, again and again, I felt his caress over my thighs, my fingers, my neck. While he used his mouth to dig out what little he'd left of my heart and trample it into the dust a little more, his thumb searched out the one tiny piece he'd left untouched and stroked to life an echo of the need for him I'd buried months before, the same need that permeated my traitorous body.

And when that thumb of his had finished reducing me to a shivering, needy wreck, when it had slid through every wall I threw in its path like a scythe through wheat, navigated every treacherous curve and misleading trail and arrived safe at the heart of my soul--when he'd lowered his voice, and dropped his eyes, and stared transfixed at the work his thumb had done unasked while he was posturing and posing and pleading--when he spoke so passionately, his eyes tracing my collarbone at last along with that one bloody thumb--that's when he asked me to stay. "Methos, please. I want--I can't--I don't want you to go," he said, and all reason fled my brain. "I know we can't go back, and I'm too--I can't go forward with you, not yet. But I don't--I want you in my life, Methos. I need you there. Please, don't go, don't leave me alone here."

What the hell else could I say but "All right"?

Gods above, I hate it when I get this maudlin.

Then came his own reckoning. I suppose I failed him, then, as fully as he'd failed me not six months before. Millennial demons, the fight between Good and Evil--what was I meant to say to that? Yes, Mac, I believe you, now toddle off and take care of Ahriman for us, won't you?

I thought--well. Not to put too fine a point on it, I thought he was losing his mind.

Death is one thing. After five thousand years, I've learnt to expect it. Even from those who shouldn't have to die. It happens to everyone, and one day it will happen to me. That I want to postpone that day, for myself and for others, is no surprise, or it shouldn't be. That it hurts when it finally comes, no less of a surprise. But somehow, it always comes as one.

The thing I haven't gotten used to is insanity. Not that I've gotten any more used to death, I suppose, but madness holds a special horror. To lose someone, and at the same time to have them in front of you, whole and hale and hearty--until you look beneath the surface... there's no pain more final than that, I think. It was all I could do to stay, and his request that I remain the only thread that held me here. When he snapped that sole tie himself after the horror grew too much for him here... well, there was no reason left after all to leave with him gone. And I found Joe made for a pretty compelling reason to stay.

Maybe I was deluding myself even then.

And I suppose, in some ways, it was easier to believe he was crazy than that he was the Champion of the Millennium. Or that he really did see Kronos. It hurt enough that I had to see Kronos die in the first place, more that I had to help arrange it. Most of all that I had to kill Silas because of it. To have him come back, in the form of a demon--Kronos may have been Duncan's personification of evil, but he wasn't mine. And to hear him spoken of in such a way--

Well. I suppose in the end I couldn't handle that, either. I suppose, in the end, there really was no salvation for any of us. What happened to Richie was terrible, but also highly probable. That it had to happen at Duncan's hand--is it any wonder I thought him lost?

Once more, death stepped in, halted our clumsy dance. The first day I saw him, I offered him my head. The last day I saw him, he begged me to take his.

That--that's what hurt most of all.

No matter what he thought he deserved, who he had hurt--that he would lay judgement on himself, and ask me to carry it out. After all we had been, all we had done, everything we'd said and seen and touched in one another. After he begged me to stay, convinced me with one idle touch that we could get past this, after he'd torn out my heart and crazy-glued himself back into it--he decided he deserved to die. And that I was a good way to do it. He knew what judgement meant to me, and still he broke that trust.

So. He vanished. I was unable to give him the absolution he was seeking, and so he looked for it elsewhere. I don't know if he found it. I didn't think I cared. I'd gathered up the tattered remnants of my soul, the few pieces neither of us had yet gotten around to shredding, and I rebuilt my life around the premise that Duncan MacLeod was no longer a concern of mine.

And now, it's all gone to hell again. I can't afford to care this way. I can't afford to hurt this way. I can't afford to step this close to that fire again. Not and stay human.

I know this. Why is it I still can't walk away?

*************

It's full night again, by the time I return to Paris. Full night, and the stars shine sickly above the glaring city lights. Beyond the noise of the traffic, a lone bird trills. The door to LeBlues Bar is standing open, letting the spring air swirl in amongst the music and the laughter and the smoky tenor caressing the words as it gives the song a life all its own. I've been standing here ten minutes now, my back against the brick and my eyes seeking the faint glitter of stars through the haze, listening to Joe's song and trying to forget the feel of an immortal signature trailing icy fingers up my spine.

He must have changed. He would never have left a passing immortal uninvestigated before. He certainly wouldn't have left one lingering just inside sensing range without at least stepping out to say 'hello'.

Then again, maybe he already knows it's me, and doesn't want to spend the effort to come out and greet me. It's no more unlikely than me standing out in the night, too full of doubt and memory to go inside and greet him. A pair of fools, indeed.

Maybe, if I stand here long enough, I'll learn to forget about what might have been and concentrate on what is. And maybe while I'm at it the sun will turn nova, too.

There won't be a sequel, sorry--but this was almost a sequel. It stalled out, unfortunately, but if you'd like to read it, you're welcome.