Highlander fic

[icarus_chained]

Cassandra fic, oddly enough. *shrugs*

Title:  Solstice Child
Rating:  PG
Fandom:  Highlander the series
Continuity:  Set just after 'Archangel'
Characters/Pairings:  Cassandra, Methos
Summary:  After Duncan disappears, Methos shows up in Donan Woods for a word with the witch
Wordcount:  2158
Disclaimer:  Don't own anything
Notes:  No Cassandra-bashing, because I honestly cannot blame the woman for wanting to kill the man who hurt her, and to be fair, neither did he

Solstice Child

 

She did not sense him coming until he was almost upon her. In the twilight, in the quiet peace of Donan Wood, the earth at rest beneath her, she did not feel him coming until the moment he stepped from between the trees. For a moment, she did not recognise him. He hummed with something deeper than Quickening, older than Death. He was a spirit of the wild woods, in that moment, an ancient child sprung forth from the earth, a singing, peaceful presence. Her arms had opened without thought, her spirit leaping in welcome.

Then, she saw his face. Her sword was in her hand like magic, the peace of the woods broken by the fractures inside her own soul, and her face twisted in hate. "Methos!" she spat, steel raised like a ward between them. He did not move.

"Was the prophecy real?" he asked, his hands empty, his expression distant, old and watchful. He made no move to defend himself, here on her holy ground, in the center of her power. His feet were bare, she noted distantly. He wore no sword.

"What?" she asked, moving to circle him warily. He turned with her, flowing in place, eyes never leaving hers. He was afraid. More than afraid. But not of her. She frowned despite herself.

"The prophecy," he said again. "The Solstice Child. Was it real?"

She paused, stilling, something briefly fearful leaping in her breast. Already? Surely not. Surely no. "Why do you want to know?" Chill, vicious. If Death would harm her boy now, if Methos would use the prophecy against Duncan ... but it made no sense. Why now, after everything? It made no sense. "What interest is the prophecy to you?"

"Did you name him Solstice Child?" he asked again, low, urgent, something riding in his voice beneath the words. Not fear. Not magic. Something ... older. "Did you name him, Cassandra!"

She snarled, stabbing the earth with her sword, spitting at the command in his voice. "You do not command me to speak, Death! No more. Never again! Do you understand me?" She had let him live. She had had him in her power, and let him live, and by the gods he would respect her for that! After all he had done to her, he would respect her for that!

He quieted, face twisting in something like pain, and nodded. But the urgency had not left him, and again, for the third time, he asked. "Did you name him Solstice Child, priestess?" And at that last, weary title, she answered.

"I did. It was him. Highland Child, born of the Solstice. The prophecy is real, Methos, and it falls to him."

He closed his eyes, and for a brief moment, he looked all of five thousand years old. Older. For a moment, it was not Death she looked upon, the killer of a thousand years, but Methos, the oldest of the old, the first of them, the last. Immortal child, whose feet lay planted in the earth. For a moment, she almost forgot to hate him.

"Why?" she asked at last. "Why do you need to know?"

He opened his eyes, met hers, and this was the man she knew, not from three thousand years ago, but from today, from this time and this place. Weary, cynical, bitterly amused. This was the man who'd stood at Duncan's side and protested innocence with lying eyes. But they were not lying now.

"Because it has started," he said, simply, and her heart clenched within her breast. "Because the game has begun. Abraham has laid his child upon the altar, all unknowing, and no angel this time to bring reprieve. The lamb has been sacrificed, Cassandra, by Duncan's own unwilling hand, and your Solstice child has fallen to darkness and despair."

"No," she whispered. "No." It couldn't be. It couldn't be. Duncan was stronger than that. He was stronger. She had seen it, had known it from the first moment she'd laid eyes on him. She had looked into his heart, and seen his strength. He could not have fallen now. "That's not ... that's not right. It can't ..."

He looked at her sadly. So sadly, tired eyes full of pity. "It can. It is. Command me speak the truth, if you want. It will not change." Then softer, watching her, old eyes looking through her soul, and she did not know this man. She did not know him. This was not Death, brutal and uncomplicated. This was older. Oldest. "You forgot, didn't you?" he said, not really a question, looking at her wonderingly. "Or never knew. Priestess. Cassandra. You forgot. You named him, and forgot what it would mean."

She stared at him, uncomprehending. "I don't understand." She didn't. The Sight coiled within her, sparking at something in his eyes, but it was clouded and she didn't understand. "What are you saying, old one?" And why she called him that, she didn't know, except that something in him was not the man she knew, and what he was she had no name for.

"Solstice," he said, gently, bitterly. A faint mocking and a fainter pain. Methos sneered a little. "You don't remember. None of you do, not now. You're all too young. But I thought you would, Cassandra. If not from fact, then from myth. From the tales of your birth. Don't you remember what the solstice means?"

She frowned, nettled, anger uncurling in her breast. Damn him. She was the priestess! For three thousand years, carrying the duties of a people he had killed! How dare he question her in this!

"I know what it means!" she growled, low and venomous. "Death. Rebirth. Hope. Darkness turning into light. I know! That's why it had to be him! Because ..." She stopped, the words strangling themselves, not knowing how to continue. How to explain what Duncan was, what he meant. How to explain the hope she had felt on seeing him, the safety he represented, the goodness that a creature like this could never hope to understand. Not Methos. Not Death. Duncan was Light incarnate, and she had known in her soul the day they met that he was Solstice Child, that he would bring an end to Darkness. She had known.

Methos looked at her. Just looked, with that pity and contempt she remembered so very well, that she hated so very much. He had no right to pity her. He had no right! But he didn't care. He never had, and she wondered how Duncan had never seen it, how he had never looked at this hollow shell that called itself a man and seen it for what it was. How had Duncan never seen the emptiness of this creature?

"We were gods, once, you know," he said suddenly, and she startled. "Immortals. You never knew. I never taught you. We were gods. The gods of winter and rebirth. The gods of blood and sacrifice. The gods of Solstice. You don't remember. You forgot the stories, forgot the old ways. Everyone does, sooner or later. You've forgotten everything, Cassandra. And now Duncan will pay for it, you stupid witch." Low, vehement, and the depth of it startled her, made her wonder, made her look. Look at him, look at what stood before her, try to see it for what it was. Her Sight unfolded.

"Solstice child," he said, soft and sad. His feet were bare, sunk into the earth beneath the trees, and his eyes were old and dark in a face that had never aged. Ancient youth, ancient child, the primal world brought forth. "We came to them out of the darkness, out of the woods. It didn't matter who we were, or where we came from. It didn't matter what we wanted. They were mortal children, clinging to life and we were their sacrifice, Cassandra. The gods of solstice. When the year turned to night, when the wheel turned on them, it was we they laid out beneath the stars. It was our breasts they cut open, our blood they drained to water the fields, our life they took to sustain their own and bring the world back to light." His eyes were hollow, bright and broken, and the old world stared out at her from their depths. He was so young, the child taken and broken, and so old, the oldest of those who yet lived. His voice sang with a power she did not know, that whispered at parts of her she'd thought dead, or never known.

"Who are you?" she whispered, stricken, unable to look at him, unable to bear the sense of his Quickening against hers, unable to bear the thought of this. She wanted him to be Death, suddenly, wanted what she had hated with such dark joy, wanted back what she could understand. She wanted the monster, or even the man, the false penitent who stood at Duncan's side. Not this. Not this ancient thing who looked on her like a child, not this young man who had once died and died again beneath the stars, not this person capable of pity and sacrifice and pain. She didn't want this. But again, he didn't care.

"I am all that remains of something best forgotten," he said sadly. Gently. "Of a world better off lost. But parts of it remain. Parts of it return. The darkness. The priestess. The sacrifice." He paused, shook his head wearily. "To save the world, the solstice child must die, Cassandra. To bring the light, he must lay open his own breast. To break the darkness, he must sunder his own heart." He shook his head, pity in his eyes as his smile twisted on itself. "You named him, priestess. You named the sacrifice, Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod, and now he must die, and fall to darkness, and come back to life if only he has the strength. Only if he's strong enough, after the breaking. It has begun. The wheel has turned and no-one can stop it now."

She stared at him, quaking, the weight of earth beneath her feet, the sweetness of the air in her lungs, all the vivid joy of life at her fingertips and before her eyes. The world, bright and beautiful, trembled on the brink of darkness, on the cusp of a year, a millennium, an aeon. On the turn of a wheel, and the strength of a broken man, her beloved child. And in front of her, the first child, the oldest man, who had seen aeons rise and fall before, who had laid open his breast for the turning of that wheel, who had slaughtered hope and nurtured life, looked at her with weary pity.

"He will come back," she whispered, hands curling into fists, voice shaking with sincere, desperate hope. "He is strong enough. Methos. No matter what happens, no matter what that creature does to break him. He is strong enough."

And there. A glimpse inside the cipher before her, of the human man inside the Immortal. A wry twist of a mouth, a flicker of humour, and of pain, and of distant, thready hope. Methos smiled, and bowed his head. "I hope you're right, Cassandra," he said, softly, eyes crinkling over the shadow of a true despair. "If anyone could be, I suppose ... it would be him. Damned boyscout. It would be him."

She stared at him, at the rueful humour suddenly revealed, at the hope and youth that had never quite died, not in all the long years of his life, and found herself reaching out, found herself at his side and laying a hand on his shoulder while he leapt beneath her touch and stared at her in wary confusion. She found herself touching him, surrendered to the strange urge to comfort, and almost laughed at the shock she found in him. Almost laughed, and almost cried. For herself, the victim offering comfort to her abuser. For him, Death stricken low by kindness. And for Duncan, her brave and broken child, who made such things possible.

"He will come back," she said again, stronger, surer, not the thrum of prophecy but the faith of a friend. "He is Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod, my solstice child, and he is more than strong enough, old one." Her voice softened, gentled, and she smiled without rancour at him whom she had hated. "He will not break as you were broken, Methos. He will not fall as you fell. He will not fail us." This, she knew as she knew the sun rose in the morning, and always would.

For a second, he was silent, just looking at her. He had a strange expression, an ancient youthfulness, wry hope and regret, and then he smiled. The first genuine smile she had ever seen from him, the first smile that held not a hint of cruelty, not a touch of hate. He smiled at her as a man smiles for a friend, and nodded quietly.

"As you say, Cassandra. As you say."