In the Echoes
Was that it? Was
this the 'something' that I've been waiting for all my life? That
ephemeral thing that I could feel always somewhere just over the horizon, the
faint, teasing sense of expectation out there on the edge of my senses?
I'd become so used to it being there that I barely noticed its presence. I
always assumed it was the Game, but now... Perhaps it was this fight all along.
This fight.
In
the end less a fight than an acceptance of the evil in myself, that part of myself
that I never wanted to examine too closely. Ahriman -- evil -- is part
of us all. I'd never wanted to accept that before. But evil is as much a part
of me as love or compassion.
A vast evil turned
aside for another millennia, so the legend goes. It
seems a long time. To me at least, but I know enough (I hope) to know that time
is relative. What is one millennia to Methos, who has lived
at least five? Did he know of this before, had he heard and discounted
it, perhaps, in that way that he has? Maybe that's why he's gone.
Perhaps he knew
that he could do nothing for me, not this time. This wasn't like all the other
times he had ridden to my rescue -- no ancient holy spring to cleanse my soul
and ease my pain. No, this time I was all alone, the way I needed to be. I
really think he knew.
I miss him. At
least I think I do. Everything I feel is so far away from me now. Distant. It's better that he isn't
here to see how little of the me that he knew is left. Better for me. I don't
think I could stand it yet, to see him and watch him wonder where the Duncan
MacLeod he knew has gone. I would not know what to tell him. I am so utterly
changed by this that I barely recognize myself.
Armageddon in one
soul, I told Joe. He nodded as if he understood, but I don't think he truly
grasped how right that was. It's destroyed everything I knew and left me empty
and alone. There's a wasteland inside me now -- a vast empty crater of nothing.
And yet it's not without its peace. There's a peace inside this nothingness, a sense
of completion, of journey's end. But I have to wonder, what now?
If that truly was
the purpose and the meaning of my life, and yet my Immortal life stretches out
before me limitless and unafraid, then with what will I fill it? I can't go
back to how I lived before; the man that lived that life no longer exists. He
is gone and I am left wondering what this new man is supposed to do.
Where will I find
meaning now, when the price of victory has been so high? How can I relax and
enjoy the gifts of Immortality, the gifts of victory, without recalling who
paid the highest price?
Richie.
I still can't
believe he's gone. He had become the man I'd always seen in him, a good,
decent, honorable man and I was so proud of him. The irony is that if I'd done
a worse job, been a different kind of teacher, then he might still be alive. If
he'd been less loyal, less concerned with protecting his friends, then he might
never have thrown himself into the face of danger. But he'd gone after what he
thought was Joe, like he'd seen me go after friends in trouble time after time,
only this time it was all an illusion and the only one in danger was Richie
himself.
I'd taught him the
things I thought he needed to know, and he'd learned them well, only to find
that they weren't what he needed at all. In trying to be the best teacher I
could be, I left Richie vulnerable in the worst way. Vulnerable
to me. So that the one he trusted most turned about to be the one of
which he should have been most wary. Not even if I live to see the next
champion will I forget that moment, the moment when I ended that short life,
that life so full of promise.
I didn't tell Joe,
though I suspect he knows, but I can still feel the blade cutting through
Richie's neck. God, it makes me sick just to think it, even now. When Joe put
Hideo's katana in my hands, and I touched it for the first time since that
awful day, all I could feel was the way the lovingly tended blade, made of all
those layers of handcrafted steel, sliced through skin and muscle and bone.
Through the flesh of the man I loved like my own son. As Joe put it in my
hands, and begged me to take it, I could feel every sensation as if it was
happening all over again. It was all I could do not to drop it.
But I took the
sword and it rests, even now, in the bottom of the chest across the room. I
can't bring myself to throw it in the
Accepting
the inevitable.
That was a big part of what I learned -- shut away from the world this past
year. Accept that which cannot be changed. I thought I had learned it pretty
well too, until I came back and tried to fight Ahriman the same way I'd fought
a thousand others who'd sought my destruction. Instead I found that the only
way to fight the evil was to accept the inevitable, just as Richie had 'shown'
me.
So I guess, in a
strange way, this victory was his as much as mine. And, in an even stranger
way, that helps just a little, to ease the pain of his absence. Only a little
though.... I can still hear him in my head sometimes; I think I can hear him
even now.
"So
what now, Mac?" I hear him ask in the echoes of my empty barge, my empty life.
And right now I
can only answer him, "Damned if I know, Rich. Damned if I know."