Summary: Methos and Joe get snowed in at the bar over Thanksgiving.
Disclaimer: If I owned them why would I waste my time posting to fanfic sites? I'd be off making lots and lots of money! But since I'm not, I therefore don't, nor do I pretend to.
It was bitterly cold, surprisingly so for late November in Seacouver. Methos had the heat in his Range Rover cranked to full blast as he traveled the mostly deserted streets. He was tired, having just flown back from Geneva and the Watcher headquarters.
However, it wasn't just the hours of travel and jet lag that made him weary. This meeting of 'Methos researchers' had been a harrowing one. Many questions and speculations regarding the alleged oldest immortal had been raised that made the real Methos feel dreadfully uncomfortable. When Don was alive those discussions were always perfectly stuffy and scholarly. Now… Now it seemed that even the watchers were looking for the world's oldest living man to have all the answers concerning life, the universe, and everything. Their speculation on religion was almost comical, but some of their suppositions on indo-European history made Methos shudder with long-repressed memory no matter how untrue those suppositions were.
Now Methos was back from Geneva, hating the cold and longing for warmer climes. He was physically tired and mentally drained, not liking that his innermost walls were once again recognized by his conscious mind. It wasn't that they were ever in any danger of cracking, but Methos preferred that he never even remembered their existence. Most days it worked, and all things concerning his life before entering the game remained safely hidden even from himself. He cursed himself, blaming the straining events of the past year for his weakening resolve.
With a hard squint and a shudder he banished those thoughts from the front of his mind, choosing instead to focus on his current situation. It was just after nine p.m. on Thanksgiving day, and everyone who was traveling had already reached their destinations, filled with the varying degrees of happiness and tension that surrounded such enforced holiday family gatherings, and of course, with copious amounts of food.
Thanksgiving was an amusing holiday to those on the outside, the ones who don't make a habit of celebrating it. For Methos it was just another day of the three-sixty-five, nothing special for him to observe. To keep his thoughts on the present he tried and then discovered with some amusement that he couldn't recall exactly where he was in the 1620s. He had been in Paris playing chess with Darius around the turn of that century and so surmised that during the famed pilgrim feast he was off getting sloshed in some other region of that country. Italy had been the 1630s, and he remembered that time with a wince and a shudder.
No, Methos was not one to observe such a frivolous holiday by choice. He didn't have any Scrooge-esque hatred of the American kickoff of the holiday season, nor did he adopt the Charlie Brown philosophy of morose protests of the rank consumerism and commercialization of a once-sacred hotbed of tradition (though the comparisons of the infamous peanuts character to a certain Scotsman was enough to make Methos laugh aloud, which then caused him to momentarily debate whether or not he took the role of Linus or Snoopy, and the chuckle turned into an outright guffaw as he pictured Amanda as Lucy). The momentary amusement passed as the next light turned and Methos resumed his journey.
"Ok, pilgrimage," he amended through the death of his laughter.
What an amusing lot, the pilgrims, Methos continued to muse. Kicked out of Holland for their puritan beliefs to settle in the so-called 'new world.' Methos had to laugh at that: he'd seen the 'new world' centuries before. To add a few more shades of amusement, the pilgrims landed several hundred miles off course and then had to put up with a brutal New England winter. Idly Methos wondered if the current denizens of Plymouth had such cold weather to deal with this Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving: a time of giving thanks. A time of gathering with loved ones to give thanks for 'fill-in-your-blank-here'. It was a millennia-old tradition that somehow seemed to resurface every so often in various cultures across the globe. Methos had partaken of such rituals whenever he found himself an actually functioning member of the given society (as opposed to a disinterested shadow lurking unnoticed within its walls). These were usually the times he had chosen to take a wife. That had been... sixty-seven--no, sixty-eight times. Sixty-nine? Oh crap!
One thing Methos hated was losing track of his wives. He clearly remembered being married to each and every one of them, though as years passed he lost track of which century they came in and what order he married them in, using only convenient historical occurrences to mark the passage of time, since the civilized world had the annoying habit of restructuring its calendars every few centuries anyway.
Several minutes and a litany later Methos had successfully recalled sixty-eight names. Although he wondered about the sixty-ninth that somehow struck chords within his brain, he couldn't associate a name or a face to this aimless memory. Eventually he dismissed the thought as one of his more influential romantic entanglements that hadn't ended in marriage. There were more of those than Methos could recall at any one time, but anything to make the progression of red lights more bearable.
Eventually he recalled forty-three more names and an astonishing number of faces. He knew that should he desire he could look them all up in his journals (although most of those were safely squirreled away in various corners of the globe), but there was no sense in dwelling on lost memories. Not when one has the present to think of.
Then, unasked for and unhindered, memories of a year ago flooded his brain. Alexa. They had been in Santorini last November, towards the end of her life. She was American and insisted on celebrating the holiday, to 'introduce' it to her British lover.
Maybe dwelling on the past isn't so bad…
Tried as he might, Methos couldn't expel the depressing thoughts from his mind. This was the real reason he never bothered with observance holidays anymore. What did he have to give thanks for anyway? Sixty-eight buried wives, only twenty-three of which survived to old age. How many other friends and lovers has he buried? He shuddered to think of counting such a number, but knew that in the last page of each journal such totals were calculated. All he had to do was envision the pages and do a little math…
NO!
Methos hated this holiday with the same abstract vehemence with which he's hated other similar holidays down through the ages. How can one be thankful when all your loves and friendships invariably end in death? And when you are the oldest human being on the face of the planet, and had been for more years than you'd like to think, the word 'invariably' is rigid and non-negotiable. He had always shied away from celebrating them, despite the constant invitations of the friends he'd made along the way, preferring instead to get very, very drunk toasting half remembered people and ideals long buried.
The sinking realization that Methos had been fighting ever since Bordeaux was threatening to overtake him again, yet even this was the better thought than what was in his mind when he left Geneva, so he went with it.
In a very brief expanse of time he had lost most of the people he'd ever chanced caring about down through the ages. There the harsh yet expected passing of Alexa, and survival for a time was solely for the preservation of her memory. Then in one fell swoop MacLeod had removed himself from the picture, after eliminating Kronos and Caspian (Silas Methos couldn't blame on MacLeod although he tried to for some time). MacLeod's departure also successfully removed Amanda by default (Methos knew that if it had come to it she would have chosen the Scot without hesitation--MacLeod wasn't someone you could choose another over. He had learned that lesson, painfully, for himself. What surprised him was that he found himself caring about it). Joe tried to refuse to choose sides, and he knew that the watcher would bitterly resent being forced to because he would have to choose MacLeod, as they all do. So Methos removed the element of choice and disappeared for a while.
That brief separation was one of his most lonely times in recent memory. Recent memory? Methos cursed himself for the qualification.
Then he remembered Keane, when Amanda goaded him into involvement. Nothing had been resolved, and Amanda was ignorant of the whole situation (he knew this because he knew that Amanda would have confronted him about it). The aftermath of Bordeaux and all that went unresolved still continued to spread through his life like a stain. He hadn't wanted to reenter their lives so soon anyway.
Then, as if to add insult to injury with his relationship to MacLeod, he had to let the arrogant Highlander kill Byron. Standing aside to let the Katana of Justice pass was nearly as painful as turning his sword against his beloved Silas. My poor, sweet, beautiful, tragic Gordon. Your soul, I fear, was even older than mine. Another audible curse in a long-dead language escaped his lips in the vague direction of Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and all the rest who conspired to make the perfect half-century for him to wallow in torrents of self-pity, yet sealed the doom of his beloved student. Idly he wondered if any immortals ill-fated enough to be a product of that time were still alive.
With Byron dead the tension between Methos and Duncan hadn't eased any, and now Amanda suspected a falling out between them, but for the first time Methos found himself praising Duncan's sense of honor: he knew he would never betray such secrets without permission, not even to Amanda. He was just thankful that while Richie may be perhaps the most perceptive to shifts in the Highlander's moods, he respectfully declined questioning it, at least to Methos, even when he chanced to visit him at Rainier last month before his sojourn to Switzerland.
Then there was Joe. Joe he had known for over ten years, which was rather remarkable from a mortal standpoint. They were both good friends of Don Salzar. Another thought that made Methos involuntarily shudder. He had offered his head to MacLeod when they had first met to insure that Kalas was defeated. He did it for Don. He did it for Fitzcairn and for MacLeod. He did it for, well, himself. As a way to end his existence. It was a noble cause, backing the boy scout. He could 'live' with the knowledge that his quickening would serve to strengthen Duncan's. Duncan hadn't realized then what such a gesture was, coming from Methos. Methos idly wondered if it had ever dawned on him, and then violently shoved the pain of possibility from his mind.
The thought returned to the ether from whence it came, but the residual pain did not. Some thought had to surface to justify such a feeling, and in hindsight Methos wished he could have kept his thoughts on Duncan's fight with Kalas for the happy ending that ensued despite the rough road to it. He too had known Fitzcairn, but in another life, and well before Duncan's birth. He did not dare confess to Duncan that he too would be morning his passing. No one could pack away a pint like Hugh Fitzcairn.
He also wished more deeply than in recent months that MacLeod had actually taken his head that night. He also wished that he had let Cassandra take it in Bordeaux. How could he muse on all he has lost without his thoughts returning to the horsemen again and again?
He had to admit that he was shocked to discover an errant tear when he learned of Caspian's death, in spite of all that had just occurred. It seemed a vile, sacrilegious thing considering the news accompanied the revelation that Duncan was still alive. He hadn't cried when he thought the Highlander dead, but then he wouldn't have given Kronos the satisfaction anyway.
Or was the tear one of happiness for MacLeod's against-all-odds survival? Methos honestly couldn't either remember or decide what had caused the brief breakthrough of his defenses and settled on preferring it that way.
Of course the thought that he forced himself to keep hidden was the fact that he knew he couldn't avenge Duncan even if he wanted to, because in that moment he couldn't bring himself to raise a blade against his brothers, not even for the Highlander's sake. The sake of a man for which he was willing to die but not to kill? Was that the real reason he challenged Keane?
No, he could kill for Duncan. Kristen proved that. Jacob Galati proved that. He just couldn't kill his brothers for him. That was entirely different. Right?
But that's exactly what he had done. He left MacLeod to fight Kronos, silently praying to every deity he could think of as he scurried off seemingly to do Kronos's bidding that the Highlander could defeat him. It was as the man himself had said, Methos couldn't (wouldn't? Is that the same?) defeat Kronos, but had hoped the Highlander could.
What he could do was defeat Silas. Was that for MacLeod? For Cassandra? To prove to them that he had changed? Honestly he couldn't recall his thoughts or emotions in that moment, surprising himself more than Silas when he turned his Ivanhoe in challenge.
Secretly Methos knew why. He couldn't let Silas live if he had doomed Kronos to die. Silas had been his favorite. Well, that wasn't exactly true, but their relationship was never at any point anything less than an easy, unassuming camaraderie. Kronos was demanding and sometimes more suspicious than Methos himself, and trusting the man with his head for centuries didn't make him trust him any more or any less. Caspian he just flat out didn't like the way quarrelsome siblings say that 'hate' each other and convince themselves they really mean it. Methos knew that he would take the happy memory of Caspian's Hittite army with him to the grave.
Methos mused that if there were ever going to be Horsemen of the Prevent-The-Apocalypse, Duncan would be their leader. Methos dubbed him 'Honor'. Clad in a kilt he would wield the Clan MacLeod sword. The katana had too much ill-spilt blood on it to fit the role properly. It was a part of MacLeod, a part of every part of him, including the dark side he forced into submission in that well in the wilderness outside Paris. MacLeod was content to deny its existence for most of the time and Methos was content to let him, secretly envious of the ability.
To escape the torrent of painful memories Methos expanded on the idea, casting Amanda as Beauty, Richie as Innocence (because Naiveté didn't sound too flattering), and Joe as Friendship (because Mortality wasn't too pleasant, either). Death desperately wanted a seat at that table, having forsaken his brethren of millennia to chance at being a part of it. But the four were already chosen. The table was full. Methos was left out in the cold. Alone. With nothing to show for his efforts to bring down his brothers for the sake of some nameless Greater Good that he could only trust to MacLeod's belief in.
And this self-pity was hardly like him. He really should stop that...
And then Keane, when Methos couldn't make things right. Why couldn't MacLeod just see that Methos's intentions never wavered from the moment they met: keeping your arrogant, self-righteous, brooding Scottish ass alive!
First Keane then Byron. Did Duncan see? Did he appreciate what Methos allowed to happen? My poor Gordon. Don't you know that I would have protected you from anyone but Duncan Holier-Than-Thou MacLeod?
They're not yours, Doc. You're a loner, just like me.
"SHUT UP!"
Methos was startled to hear his own voice. He tried to remember who he was arguing with and the part of his brain that wasn't running away from the truth chalked it up to too many quickenings residing in his skull and musing that he was no longer able to tell if sudden surges of memory were truly his or borrowed from one of his residents.
The morbid ramblings kept tumbling through his mind in a scattered cacophony of images: Alexa, Byron, Caspian, Kronos, Silas. All five he had either failed or betrayed to death (not retrieving the Methuselah stone for Alexa was still a painful blow). Going back further he had mourned Darius, unable to show his face because he was a watcher, part of the organization that had killed probably the wisest of immortals. He had also mourned Rebecca, even though he guessed that she never truly forgave him. He wondered if Amanda knew that story, but he doubted it. It happened over two thousand years before she was born, anyway.
So many friends dead in so few years. Old friends. It was sure a record for him.
As he drove, now absently as he had forgotten his destination in the whirlwind of thought, emotion, and memory, he tried to guess at who his current friends were.
"Whom else can I bury?" he thought with more than a fair share of sarcasm. Suddenly he knocked on the wood paneling of his car's interior and wondered if Murphy had been immortal.
Things still weren't right with MacLeod, although their collective ability to just pretend that nothing had happened was steadily improving. That's something, right? Richie was ever curious but retained the decency to never ask. Methos was grateful for that as for some reason he found himself consciously interested in forming an actual friendship with the young immortal. He wondered if it was a deliberate jab against MacLeod, and knew that if push came to shove it would be an unnecessary moral dilemma for the kid if Methos were to inadvertently (or advertently? Is that even a word? Why I never studied English…) force him to choose MacLeod as he knew he would. None of this was fair to Richie, so Methos kept a respectable distance (although the fact that Richie had deliberately sought out his help with his ancient history class was touching).
Then there was Amanda. If the boys were fighting she'd take off. Natural for her to do so, to never get her hands dirty. (That isn't fair and you know it!) Whatever the problem was between them, she rightly guessed that it was none of her business and left it up to them to make amends. After forcing Joe and MacLeod to reconcile after Charlie's death, she must have decided to not push her luck.
Ah, Joseph. The last. Methos wondered if it was his mortality that made him deliberately try not to harbor grudges. Or perhaps it was his mortality in the face of so much immortality. Regardless, it didn't really matter. The watcher had tried his damnedest to 'forgive' Methos his crimes. Some days he wasn't sure if he'd succeeded totally, but still the conscious effort was there. Joe must realize that he has more days behind him than in front and to not waste any of them with petty conflicts. When you're mortal and dying the slow death of time and all of your friends could be beheaded and gone tomorrow, all conflicts that stand in the way of true friendship are petty. Even the matter of the horsemen.
Somehow Methos knew that Joe felt that way, even if Joe wasn't so sure of it himself. Perhaps that's why Methos found his SUV parked across the street from Joe's bar. He hadn't even realized he'd driven there, nor that he'd pulled over to the side of the road. As he shifted the car into 'park' and turned off the engine he wondered how much gas he'd just wasted while his mind decided it was too preoccupied to drive.
Suddenly he wondered why there were lights on in Joe's bar on Thanksgiving. Mac and Richie were in New York celebrating with Connor and Rachel. He hadn't been invited, but he was certain that Joe had been. Mike would either be in Oregon or have his family visiting, so it wasn't him either. If Joe didn't go to New York then surely he would have gone to Chicago to be with Lynn Horton and her new husband. Then a sudden thought occurred to him:
"Could Joe be spending the holiday alone?"
With his sister dead, spending the holidays with his late brother-in-law's family must be a trifle awkward for the watcher, all things considered. He had gone to the wedding last September, so perhaps he wasn't anxious to return to such a situation so soon. If that was the case, Methos silently chided him for that. His biological family deserved the same consideration as his immortal family.
But if so, then why wasn't he in New York? Connor and Rachel, Duncan and Richie. Ahh, so obvious. Father and daughter, father and son. The Clan MacLeod through and through. No interlopers welcome (at least from the perspective of said interlopers).
So Joe was spending Thanksgiving alone. It must hold some sad significance since he was an American and therefore expected to celebrate the holiday. Methos laughed to himself, surprised by the amusement present in it. He removed the keys from the ignition and stumbled from the car into the frostbitten night air, determined not to let a friend spend this holiday alone.
All contemplations of whether the motivations were altruistic or selfish (did he really want to be alone?) were forgotten as the wind seared all exposed flesh. Grumbling about it having been warmer in Geneva he shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the front door of the bar.