Methos again

[icarus_chained]

I'm on a kick, okay?

Title:  Strange Aeons
Rating:  PG-13
Fandom:  Highlander the series
Continuity:  Series 6
Characters/Pairings:  Methos, mention of the Horsemen and Mac
Summary:  Sometimes he wonders which is the bigger fiction, history, or his own memory?
Wordcount:  2166
Disclaimer:  Not mine
A/N: Title from Lovecraft quote "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even Death may die."

Strange Aeons

History is written by the victors. As long as Methos has lived, that has been so. And every victory is short-lived. That too has always been so. And with every new victory passing over the old, history has been rewritten to suit. Sometimes, he wonders why mortals even bother. Reading a history book, to him, is like reading the finest of fictions. It has all the hallmarks of epic fantasy. Battles, spies, romances, magic, mysticism ... the complete and utter lack of truth ... everything one needs to pass an hour or twenty in amusement.

He remembers things, when he reads those fictions. He always has. Sometimes, what he remembers is as much a fiction as the words on the pages. He knows that. Survival is more than just staying alive. The mind bends, to protect itself, when it has to. He's been surviving for at least five thousand years. That's a lot of bending for a mind to have to do. Sometimes he looks at his memory, and looks at history, and wonders which of them has it more wrong. It's an amusing thought.

But he has clues that history hasn't. Or hadn't, at least, until archeology started to come into its own. Men make fictions. Nature makes facts. Science has begun to whisper truth into old lies. Idly, Methos wonders if one day mankind will know as much as he does of the past, if they'll see it through science's crystalline lens and wonder at the savagery of it. Dispassionate as the forces of nature he can see them becoming. If they are allowed to go that far, of course. They mightn't be. Nature erases as easily as builds, after all.

Anyway. He has clues, to the bent places in his mind, the foggy patches. He can look at them, look at where they are, match them to the history under his fingers. And he can know, if that history is bland, that they have gotten it wrong. The mind bends to protect itself. And with all he has survived, it takes quite a bit to force his mind into bending. Those patches he has lost ... they hide terrors. Horrors. He has watched the Holocaust, and remembered it in every etched detail. What his past hides, it was worse. Maybe not for humanity, but definitely for him. And history none the wiser. Yet. Maybe when they find the graves. Maybe then.

He has more than clues, too, if he wanted to look for it. But he doesn't. He's fine just wondering.

Sometimes he wonders about specific things. Reads, searches. For the time before his memory begins, often. He wasn't lying about that. Not all of it. Maybe he might have lied a little about when things start to get fuzzy. But you can't radiocarbon date a memory, either, so maybe he was telling the truth and just didn't know it. Still. Five thousand years is such a fuzzy number. Could mean anything. He thinks he's older than that. Even before the memory starts to shake.

More often, like now, he goes looking for the biggest gap in his memory. After his first Quickening. Well after. But before the Horsemen. Not too long before, though. Close. Very close to that beginning.

Archaeology says a lot about the time. The place. History too, but back that far history is mostly myth. He finds that amusing too. Always has. What he finds more amusing still is that mortals now have no idea how much of that myth is, in fact, genuine history. As true as any of the rest of it. Gods walked the earth, once. Demons. Magic. Still do, too, much good it does anyone. Though he might be forgiven for forgetting it. Ahriman was such a artefact. Demons nowadays tend to be much more circumspect than that little stunt the millennial bastard had pulled on Mac. How was he supposed to know some demons had never left the Dark Ages?

Then again ... Kronos had never left the Bronze Age, really, so perhaps he should have known better.

He'd been a god, once. In that blank space in his memory. He knows that. They'd all been gods, then. People now, mortal and immortal, they tend to take that the wrong way, if you say it to them. Since the advent of monotheism (thank you, Yahweh, wonderful job there), people could get a bit tetchy about the word 'god'. They think it means something big, all-powerful, righteous and good. To call yourself a god is to lay claim to those attributes. People frown on that. Possibly this is why he's never told Macleod about being a god. The boy would get exactly the wrong idea.

Then again, maybe he's never told Macleod, never told Kronos, never told anyone, because he doesn't remember. Not really. Little bits and pieces. And maybe he doesn't remember because being a god, back then, meant absolutely nothing close to what they think it means now. They've gone and forgotten, all of them. And they shouldn't have. Even Christianity remembers something of the old ways. They shouldn't have forgotten. They've no excuse. Not like him. He has an excuse. Survival is the best excuse for forgetting there is.

He reads the histories, now. Reads the myths. Of the gods who walked among men. Of their fragility. He reads of the gods of sacrifice, the gods of blood, the gods of winter and rebirth. He reads of a time when gods bled to water the fields, to bring back the sun, to bless the crops. He reads of gods slaying other gods, for their people, for their lands, for the fate of worlds. He reads of gods sacrificed, over and over, rituals across centuries to keep the harvest coming, to keep the enemies away, to keep the strength in the loins of leaders. He reads of a time when being a god meant dying, endlessly, and living, endlessly. When it meant sacrifice and death, loss and agony, frailty and rage. When it meant being human, only more so. He reads. And doesn't remember.

Once, he was a god. He knows that. Once, they were all gods. Once, they bled. Every last one of them, save those who hid, who ran, who lived where there were no mortals. He knows he managed that, for a while. He remembers that, a little. Then ... but he doesn't remember that part. He knows he doesn't.

Caspian did. Caspian had known. The only one of the Horsemen. But then, Caspian had been older than the others. Older than Kronos, who wanted to be a god, in a time when mortals and immortals alike were already forgetting what it meant. And older than Silas, who ... well, Silas had never been much for people. Raised by wolves. Not really. But close enough to count.

But Caspian had known. Had remembered. Methos still shudders when he thinks of that. Shudders, and thanks every last deity he doesn't believe in that his mind bent before it broke, and saved him from that fate. He had hated Caspian. From the very first, when Kronos brought him back, half-tamed and fire-scarred, and Methos had looked into his eyes and seen the madness there. When Caspian had looked at him, the vagabond made Death, and smiled at something inside him only Caspian could see. Something that, faintly, locked down tight in memory but present anyway, had gibbered back. Methos had decided then and there that Caspian would be the first of them to fall, if it ever came to it. Funny, that. Considering.

They're all gone, now. All the gods. Even before the Horsemen rose, they were dying. The old ones. They had been dying, and more than that. They had been killing each other. Those of them that had escaped mortal notice. To keep each other in line. To keep each other from mortal eyes. The Horsemen had been one atrocity, delivered by Immortals unto mortals, a genocide born in rage. But there had been another. A far more lasting abomination. A law.

A law. That any immortal who made too big a name for themselves was to be challenged. That any one of them who drew mortal attention down was to be destroyed. That other immortals were authorised to hunt them, to challenge them, and to take their heads. To take their heads. It was blasphemy, but fear overrode it. They were given leave to hunt each other, to destroy each other, to drain the Quickening from each other. All to keep the mortals from the door. They were too out-numbered. Anything was better than the genocide that waited if the mortals found them all. Anything. That's what they said.

The One Law, it was called. Immortals were at war, a secret war, and it was the one law that was to be followed above all others. That was what they said, what they decreed. There can be only one law. There can be only one. Even now, whenever he hears that phrase, whenever he has to say it, for the sake of the travesty it has become, for that sake of the Game ... he has to laugh. He has to laugh, or he might just cry. But back then, that had been the least of his worries, and nothing close to the horror he feared.

Caspian and he had been among the last of the gods, when they met. The last of that horror. And then, as Horsemen, they had made sure of it. Methos consciously, Caspian ... well. He was never sure why exactly Caspian had done it. If Caspian had even known he was doing it. Immortal minds, godly minds, once broken, were never places Methos had spent much time wandering around in. Unhealthy places.

He had killed them, the gods. He had deliberately sought out the temples, the groves, the sacred places. He had dragged them out, the old ones, from their caves and their palaces, their temples and their dying-posts. He had dragged them out and taken their heads, turned around and slaughtered every last one of their people. And with their last breaths, they had thanked him for it. Kronos had used to laugh at them for that. He thought them the weakest of the weak, so old and so far gone that they'd thank even their killer. Kronos had been an idiot, even then.

He remembers what he'd told Mac, that one time. "It wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because I liked it." All true. He remembers that. He remembers how it had filled something inside him, how it had echoed back to the part of him he couldn't remember. Not vengeance. How could you take vengeance for something you couldn't remember happening in the first place? But joy. Freedom. Power. The power of a man, not a god. Death was a thing only a man, only a mortal could understand. What did gods know of it?

He remembers that now. He remembers what the Horsemen had been. Hard men, terrible men, horrors given life, but men. Men incarnate, the worst of their potential, but better, so much better, than what he had been before. So much better than gods. A man could kill. He could die. He could live. A god could do nothing but exist, nothing but bleed, nothing but sacrifice. A man could choose. And it had been a joy like nothing he'd ever felt.

He reads the histories, now. Reads the myths. Feels his mind skitter away from remembering the before, revel in remembering the after. He's not a Horseman, not any more. But he doesn't regret being one then. He doesn't apologise for it, either. He wonders if Mac has noticed that yet. Cassandra, yes, she is a regret. But Death? Never.

Maybe one day, he might tell Mac. Maybe. But history is written by the victors, and the gods lost centuries ago. Lost, and were lost, drifting into myth until some days not even Methos himself believes them anymore. Memory is a funny thing, after all. As reliable as history. Which is just as well, considering that in his case they're more or less the same thing.

He had been a god, and the gods had died. He'd been a Horseman, and now they were dead too. He is an Immortal. How long until the Gathering, that horror come to roost? He is a man. How long until the end of days?

Maybe one day he'll know. Maybe one day, he'll set fingers to keyboard, or pen to paper, or chisel to stone, or brush to papyrus, and he will write the history, as he has always done. Documented each and every fall, each ending, each dying. Gods and men. Peoples. Everything he has ever been. Everything he is. Everything he will ever be. Byron wrote poetry. Methos, he writes a far broader fiction, a far deeper truth. He writes history.

History is written by the victor. And what is victory, save survival?

Maybe one day, Mac will understand that, too.