Disclaimer and Notes: Lyrics from "Sometimes At Night" belong to Gorky Park (yes, I love that band) and are used without permission. Thanks to Amand-r and Jam for the lyric check.... Thanks also to the HLBETA list for the support and the mass beta, especially Sandra, Molly, and Carin. Comments are much appreciated.
By Raine Wynd
It's been a long time since
I was a boy
Things are never gonna be the same
(And) I was taught to tell what's right from wrong
To be fair, how to play the game
I forgot this rule
Cause the game's so cruel
My body's aching but I'm
running fast
Cause I have to keep the pace
I know I can't win but I have to try
To survive this human race
This crazy game called life
Sometimes at night
I feel like running in the other direction
Sometimes at night
I see so clearly the world's imperfection
The game called life
But in the morning when
the dreams are gone
And I join the race again
I try to be strong, to forget the pain
But I know it's all in vain
Things stay the same
In the game called life
The game called life
Sometimes at night
I feel like running in the other direction
Sometimes at night
I see so clearly the world's imperfection
Sometimes at night
I close my eyes and see a shattered reflection
— Gorky Park "Sometimes At Night"
Time: Some weeks after Archangel
The scream tore from his throat and shattered the silence of the modestly appointed hotel room. Even as the queen-sized bed's lone occupant sat upright, his breathing ragged, eyes wide open, the burgundy-hued bedding tangled around his body, he knew what he'd been screaming.
The nightmare was always the same, leaving him with the lingering impression of futility and the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth. Always he'd wake feeling like he'd been as close to his goal as a split-second finish. Always he'd know who the camera judged to be the loser. He never remembered, though, exactly what he dreamed. Some part of him, the part that had seen enough of the man in the dream mirror to know, recognized he was better off not having more clarity. Still, he swallowed reflexively before taking a shuddering breath, willing himself to calmness. He closed his eyes, trying for a measure of serenity, putting years of practice into the exercise, but soon discarded the effort. It was apparent to him that tonight would be a night for watching the sun rise.
He rose to his feet and stretched out the kinks his unconsciously restless slumber had produced. He then padded noiselessly over to the sliding glass doors. A flick of the latch, a push on the glass, and he was through the doorway onto the concrete balcony. He ignored the cool brush of the concrete on his bare feet as he moved to stand near the black metal railing. The sky was cloudy, a thick wash of slowly evolving grays that suited his mood as he gazed out from his six-story perch above the sprawling metropolis.
The pre-dawn air was thick with the promise of a hot, humid day. A light breeze rustled the leaves of the palm trees and whispered along his pale skin. He could smell the city, the choking smog of modernity even a tropical paradise such as this one couldn't escape, and knew that the pollution would paint the sunrise in hues too numerous to name. The irony of that fact had long ago stopped being amusing and had become one more facet of the world he'd learned to accept.
Just how many sunrises had he watched over his lifetime? he wondered as he stared at the lightening sky. He knew, however many the number, it was centuries more than what he should have had. Now, as he watched the dawn break over the city, he contemplated his life.
He'd seen so many things, far more than he could or sometimes wanted to recall. Other times, he'd smell a long-forgotten scent, or see the whisper of recognition in a stranger's face, and he'd be assaulted by memories too strong to ignore. The nightmares were only twisted fragments of things he'd either chosen to forget or couldn't remember fully.
Was living forever worth all the dark dreams, the pain of losing those he cared about over and over and over, the justified eternal paranoia and the constant keeping of secrets? He wasn't always sure. His heart had taken so much bruising over the millennia that he suspected that he occasionally fell in love just to see if he still could.
He no longer stopped to consider the cynicism of his views. The masks he donned had long past become chameleon skins, to shed as he chose. It was times like now, though, that he realized he'd integrated them so successfully that it was a struggle to find the hope that had sustained him for so long. He could feel the crush of time on his shoulders as surely as if he'd been standing on a subway in New York during rush hour. He was no Atlas, gifted with the strength to hold up the world... even his small measure of it. Some part of him recognized he had to try, if only to keep living with even a modicum of peace.
Sometimes he felt like all he was capable of doing was putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound to his soul. The pain of trying to endure would never heal, no matter how many professions he learned, no matter what new inventions were created, no matter how much time would pass. He still would be as clueless, confused, and completely out of place as a baby in a topless bar. The only thing he knew for sure was that he would remain, long after so many other things would turn to dust.
The growing sunlight highlighted an angular face now shadowed from a sleepless night. He brushed a weary hand through his black hair and sighed heavily. What was the use of knowing how Nero looked like, or why being a slave hadn't always been a bad thing, or what some long-extinct bird tasted like roasted if none of it helped him to understand the time in which he lived? It seemed as though the world was going crazy, and he wondered just when his world had become defined by the influence of a single individual. He'd thought he'd known what he was doing when he left the door open, stayed to meet Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod instead of running in the opposite direction, but reality was never quite the same as perception.
He couldn't change what had happened at a deserted Paris racetrack. It had been as much a part of the Game as anything else... or so he tried to convince himself. He knew he'd been superstitious once, prone to believing in all sorts of magic simply because he'd had no other explanations, but he liked to think he'd risen above that. He didn't want to believe in the kind of demons the Highlander had sworn he'd seen. It simply had been Richie's time to go. The world had never been perfect, as far as the ancient Immortal was concerned, and his opinion of an event didn't matter one iota. Yet he knew that, somehow, it was a far sorrier world since then.
The Highlander had disappeared.
He was alone again. He could fade into obscurity once more, biding his time until he could safely emerge at a time when few would remember who he was. Who he had been. Who he would always be.
Himself.
Whoever the hell that was.
He snickered bitterly at the mental image the thought produced. Methos the chameleon, changing colors at will just to survive. He was comfortable in his identity, shrugging on characteristics like some people shrug on coats, but he sometimes wondered if he lost more in the process than he gained. Few were willing to believe that he was just a guy who'd happened to live a very, very, long time. Fewer still knew that he had.
He hadn't ever intended to live thousands of years. It had happened, and he had just tried to live the best he could. He doubted if anyone ever truly intended to live forever; he was convinced that most people preferred not to be dead for eternity. He knew he'd gotten tired of fighting all the time, and he'd thought he'd found the perfect hiding place. He'd been content to drift along the waves in the ocean of life, careful to avoid the shipwrecks and sea monsters that would mean more hurt, more exposure.
Damn it, he hadn't asked to be pulled back into the Game.
Or had he?
The thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. He could've refused that fateful call from Joe Dawson, or arranged to be elsewhere. He could've paid some mortal to sit in his apartment and wait for the Highlander, fed him false information, done something other than the casual acceptance he'd presented. He'd known it wouldn't take much for the Highlander to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to figure out exactly who Adam Pierson was. He hadn't, and hadn't that been just asking to be pulled from the sidelines?
He clearly remembered stating once that simply the virtue — or curse— of being Immortal was enough to put someone into the Game. It didn't matter if that someone knew how to wield a sword or knew the rules. Someone would want the other's head, and the naive or innocent didn't stand a chance. Those who knew how to play had the option of sitting out occasionally, but no one ever left the playing field.
The gods knew he'd tried, more times than he'd cared to admit. All he'd ended up doing was delaying the inevitable. He'd tried, as much as possible, to be less of a pawn in destiny's chess tournament, but he couldn't avoid the Game forever.
He knew the Game was an insanity. What would it take change it would be no less difficult than disarming all the missiles from the former Soviet Union. The solution was as simple as the other guy who'd used his name had proposed, but he hadn't seen it work yet, and he sincerely doubted its validity as a result. Until it became a mass movement, he was keeping his sword sharpened and close by. He didn't have to like the Rules to play the Game, perhaps not well enough to win the Prize, but just enough to keep his head firmly attached. Oh, sure, there'd been a time when he'd relished the thought of the Prize, and more... but now when he looked at himself, all he could see was a guy with far too many stitches in the fabric of his ambitions.
He sighed again, all too aware that his thoughts were chaotic, his emotions too close to the surface. He knew he'd been running, trying to find peace, trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to see if he could somehow fix what had gone wrong. He couldn't. It was time to go home — or at least, to Paris, which was where he was calling home for now. Time to once again forget the past, bury the pain, and find a way to survive whatever happened next. He'd never had the answers before, so why did he suddenly expect to have them now?
If only... He started for the door, intending to grab a piece of paper to write out the vision that was forming with diamond-sharp clarity in his head, when he realized just what he'd been thinking. He shook his head at his silliness. Time travel wasn't a possibility this century, and by the time it was, history would be altered far too much that any change he'd attempt would have far-reaching consequences. Provided that he lived long enough to see time travel invented. Hindsight was always, Methos reminded himself, a crystal clear vision. There was no going back in time now.
Abruptly, he recalled a morning when he'd wondered what it would be like to fly, to go beyond the horizon... and he smiled to himself.
With one last look at the sunrise, he turned to pack his bags.
— - Finis — -
1.18.99 Revised 2.8.99