Turbulence

**Paris 1968**

"You didn't even have to wait a thousand years this time, Darius." Methos slipped into step beside the tall, spare figure of the priest as he walked alone in the Abbey garden.

"Six hundred and sixty-three years, but who's counting?" Darius turned his head, looking wholly unsurprised to find him here, and smiled with genuine pleasure while continuing to walk.

Methos smiled, pleased beyond telling that the priest could pinpoint the time since their last meeting so easily. It had been so long ago, in time and place and especially in the difference between who he was then, and who he was now. One thing remained the same though: he'd been running then and he was running now.

"You're troubled, Methos." No question, just a simple statement of fact.

"Is it that obvious?" He'd thought that he'd been hiding the signs of strain rather well, considering.

"So what brings you to Paris, my friend?" Darius answered the question with a question, but Methos let it go, seeing he'd done it himself not thirty seconds before.

"Are you sure I deserve that name? After Savoy? After everything?" Methos laid his hand gently on Darius' forearm, halting their slow progress across the sunlit expanse of lawn. Methos was only peripherally aware of how lovely it was here, rose-scented and emerald, tended to perfection every day by the brothers and sisters of the adjoining abbey and convent.

But the scent of roses only brought to mind funeral wreaths.

"Methos, all that was a very long time ago, as well you know. I, for one, thought that we parted friends."

An ancient memory resurrected itself. A memory of two men who had experienced every other part of each other being brought undone by a kiss. A memory of fear and pain giving way to forgiveness and healing. A little dart of long-forgotten need shot through his chest and Methos quashed it, smiling wryly.

"Yes. I suppose we did, for all that."

"Now tell me, why have you come to Paris and what can I do for you? You sound so English these days, it's a little hard to get used to, I have to admit. Have you been in England long?"

Methos laughed shortly and with a strong sense of how very false it sounded. "Darius, I've been in America of all places. I suppose the accent's left over from when I learned to speak English, you know, speak English like an Englishman, Chinese like a mandarin and all that rubbish. I can do American too, you should hear it." Methos laughed, genuinely this time. He knew what he sounded like and he knew it was pretty awful. Of all the languages he spoke and all the accents he could imitate the American one eluded him the most often. Not that it mattered, sounding like he did was a certain advantage in some circles, giving him a cachet he might otherwise not have had. But none of this was answering his friend's question.

"So what were you doing in America, Methos?" Darius asked and Methos could hear the patience in the unchanged tones.

"You know, Darius, I don't think anyone's called me that since the last time you said my name," he answered, with a sudden dropping-away sadness, a sense of the vastness of passing time that he normally worked hard to avoid.

"Would you rather I called you something else? It's all right; I know what comes with a name such as yours. You have become something of a legend in the time since we last met."

"Methos -- the oldest Immortal, bringer of wisdom and keeper of vast Immortal power," Methos mocked tiredly. He sighed and felt the cynical smirk twist the side of his mouth before he could stop it. He pushed it away, irritated with himself. There was a bench up ahead along the path, a quiet place amongst the tumbling green of weeping willows. "Can we sit a while?" he asked softly.

Darius nodded and they sat, side by side on the wooden bench. Methos sprawled back, stretching the last of the travel-stiffness from his spine, and tilting his head to watch the mares' tails scudding across the windswept sky.

"I don't mind if you call me by my name here. I trust you not to go blabbing it around to every Immortal you meet." Methos smiled with one side of his face and shrugged. He guessed it was true, unless he'd become so talented a liar that he was even deceiving himself, he did trust Darius. And wasn't that the strangest thing?

And stranger still, Darius looked as if he understood exactly that. "Thank you, Methos."

Then there was a silence that lengthened around them, cocooning them both.

Finally, into the silence, Methos spoke. "Did you hear about the assassination last week? Martin Luther King?"

"It was in all the newspapers. Were you there?" Darius turned on the bench so that Methos could see the priest looking at his face intently.

"In Memphis? No, I was in Washington when it happened. I've--I've been working the last couple of years in the civil rights movement. I was a lawyer of all things." He shot a wry smile at the other man. "No, the irony has not escaped me. But it draws you in, all that passion and commitment, all that belief in the greatness of the cause. It's addictive, almost. They're all so young and they feel everything so desperately--and now..." Methos couldn't stop the bitterness in his heart leaching into his voice. "He's dead and it's all shot to shit. I should have known better. I feel like an idiot, you know, for not knowing better. I mean at my age, getting sucked into a stupid bloody cause like that and then actually being surprised when they knocked poor bloody Dr King off."

"Known better than to care? Or to get involved? You know as well as I do that you can't live our lives and not get involved, not care -- not unless you want the darkness to claim you. You need the vibrancy of life to keep you sane."

"I know--only too well." Methos yawned and sighed deeply. "I'm just so bloody tired. Do you ever get tired, Darius? Tired of the endless, mindless circularity of it all? Everything just repeating itself over and over? One century it's Brutus and Caesar fighting over Rome -- another it's the CIA knocking off the odd politician. Always the fucking same. Don't you ever get tired of it? I do."

"I know what you mean. I think it comes to all of us in time. No one, not even you, Methos, can be strong forever. Rest a while."

Maybe Darius did understand after all. He tilted his head so it lay against the square strength of Darius' shoulder and stayed like that -- not speaking or moving, while the shadows lengthened around them -- thinking. The turbulence within him would not be quelled so easily. At last Methos sat up and curled in the seat so that he faced Darius.

"They killed him, you know," Methos began wearily.

"Who did?"

"Their government, the CIA, the FBI, some other meaningless collection of letters -- does it matter? It was all a set up, the whole damn thing was a fucking set up and when they came to clean out the office of any evidence that we had on them, they killed me--shot me without a second thought." he trailed off for a moment, lost in the shock of those memories. "I woke up in a landfill. He was -- inconvenient so they got rid of him. I don't know why I was surprised, I've been around politics long enough to know the score. Don't ask me why I thought it would be different now." Methos let the shock and betrayal wash through him again and let them go. They belonged to another life now, one that he had left behind.

"You're a good man, Methos."

Methos turned and looked at him sharply, trying to divine the edge in the words and finding none. "Darius, you know that I'm not. Never have been. You should know that. Whatever good you see in me is just a reflection from those around me."

"You are, Methos.  That you feel it so deeply only shows that you care."

"Did you ever find it significant that they say 'only the good die young' and I'm five thousand years old?"

Darius rumbled a small laugh deep in his chest. "I think that you are the exception that proves the rule. Don't be ashamed that you believed in something, in someone. Being passionate about a cause doesn't make one a fool."

"Do you ever miss it? Passion, I mean." It changed the subject and he wanted to know the answer, so it wasn't hard to justify.

Darius made the little sideways motion of his head that meant Methos had hit a sensitive subject. He saw the quick half-smile crease the priest's face.

"Not that sort of passion," Methos smiled. "Although--for old times' sake?" He raised an eyebrow.

Darius just laughed gently, with the faintest trace of wistfulness dancing on the edge of it.

"Thanks a lot -- old 'friend'," Methos laughed back, feeling something intangible lighten inside him -- just a little. "You know what I mean though, that feeling that every move you make is important and vital. That singing in your gut that goes with the curling of your toes when the things you do are what you really want to do -- that you believe in -- whether it's a person or a job or a cause. Gods, they had so much of it and it just sucked me in like a damn whirlpool and I let myself get carried away." The bitterness was still there; he could taste it lurking at the back of his throat. Damn.

Darius smiled as if he knew exactly what Methos felt -- perhaps he did at that. "You should meet someone," he said, smiling up at the scudding clouds. "He'll be here in a couple of hours. He was a kind of student of mine, I suppose you could say I've never met anyone more passionate than he is about everything: people, ideals, loyalty, honor. A good man for all that he still believes that honor can be found at the point of a sword."

"A good and honorable Immortal? He won't last."

"Don't be so sure, Methos, Duncan MacLeod may just surprise you. Stay, meet him and see for yourself."

"And get pulled in by all that 'passion'?" Methos snorted mockingly. "Some other time, perhaps. Maybe I'll go to London for a while, chase some girls in mini-skirts." Methos smirked wickedly at his old friend. "Or maybe some boys in bell-bottoms." He laughed at the mental picture that thought brought.

"Don't stay too long in the shallows my friend, too easy to get stuck there."

The laughter stilled and Methos met the serious gray eyes. "I'll be back, you know me, the original bad penny. I always turn up again. Maybe next time I'll meet this Duncan MacLeod of yours, you never know."

"You won't regret it. Take care -- watch your head."

"And you."

Darius smiled a little indulgently. "I no longer leave Holy Ground, my friend. I am safe here."

A shadow crossed the sun and Methos frowned at his friend's naivete "No one's ever safe anywhere, Darius. Be careful."

The priest nodded but said nothing more.

They stood and faced each other then, old enemies who had become old friends, who had inexplicably become something more, and as if by mutual agreement, opened their arms to one another and embraced, strength for strength.

The End

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