Zero as a Limit
Fandom: Highlander
Category/Rated: Probably NC17 to be on the safe side. Not slash. Not really sure what it is.
Year/Length: ~1515 words
Pairing: Cory Raines and Methos
Disclaimer: These belong to Panzer/Rysher, not to me. I merely play with them and wish.
Summary: What Plot? Everyone has to have a hobby
Author's Notes: Sebastian made me watch this really terrible movie. This is what I got from it. The title is from a song by the Human League.
Beta: by Jennie and Sebastian. It is due to their painstaking work that this doesnt suck. I am most grateful.
Tall, pale in the fluorescent light, the old man moved through the airport collecting scant possessions, covering the ground with a deceptively lazy stride.
Proffering a credit card to the bored clerk behind the counter, he rented a car, smiled a brief thank you, and made his way out into the familiar, well-remembered night.
America for beginners, he thought. New World 101! You start at an airport, and thats bad enough, but it doesnt prepare you for the world beyond Flashing white teeth at the darkness in a momentary smile, he opened the door of the compact car hed rented, and tossed his backpack negligently onto the rear seat. Climbing behind the wheel at last, he sat, motionless, seemingly frozen in time for the space of several heartbeats, before finally starting up the engine. The sound was abrupt in the quiet night, echoing around the otherwise deserted parkade.
On a hilltop beneath the same starry void, another man chuckled softly to himself as he counted money. There was a lot of it - far too much for him to assay individual banknotes. He checked out bunches of tightly wadded currency, riffling one or two and breaking them apart so that each note sprang from the stack as though eager to flutter out. Scooping them all up, he stuffed his haul into a paper grocery bag and tossed it onto the passengers seat of the car he was driving, then whistling a jaunty tune, he pulled his hat to a rakish angle and executed a couple of neat dance steps prior to getting back into the car. Finally he gunned the engine and pulled away.
5,000 years of never enough. Cold stars and borrowed time. Who was he really? All he knew was his need to live. He was merely an urge, and that was no longer enough. The places hed seen; the people hed known; the heads that hed taken all blurred into one as he drove. The only thing that remained in his memory - the only real thing - was gone from him now, torn away by a life that was no longer kind.
Alexa.
Hearts didnt break; he knew that. Hed watched over long, lonely years, waiting for the final shattering of all that he was, but still he existed, only now numb and empty, alone with the cold stars.
Oh yes, he still lived -- if this was indeed living.
Dying was something that hed managed to avoid thus far, but he couldnt for the life of him remember why hed bothered. All those that hed loved had died, and here he was, creeping back to lick wounds that would only fester and grow within him for the rest of time. What was the point in that?
A quarter of a million dollars, casually stuffed into a supermarket sack, sitting there just as if it were groceries. The brown bags drab, innocent exterior concealed the stolen fortune. Cory let out a whoop as he reached out to pat it.
It had been an astonishingly simple task to relieve the Wells Fargo employees of the cash theyd been carrying. Hed been shot several times, and of course it had hurt like the devil, but then it always did. However, his apparent resurrection from the dead had spooked them so badly that theyd offered no further resistance as hed appropriated the money theyd been guarding.
Now he raised his voice in song as he drove along. There was a shelter for the homeless he knew about. The cash would mean that they could remain open despite the heavy cost of the services they were providing. He would have it there by morning.
The miles blurred by. He drove mechanically, noting his own growing hunger with clinical detachment. Hed been to the dojo in Seacouver only to find that McLeod was out of town, somewhere down in Washington State. Without comment hed returned grimly to his car and set off once again. There was no discernable impatience in his expression, merely a weariness that was bone deep. After all, he had eternity, didnt he?
That thought hit him now, as it never had before. Eternity! A lifetime - hundreds of lifetimes - of loneliness. Forever was now; it was here, and all of a sudden he wondered why.
What point was there in this endless striving to stay alive? What was the reward? Those he loved all grew old and died leaving him alone yet again. That was never going to change. He was doomed to care - to care forever - and life was no longer a blessing to him, but rather a curse as he - like Ahasueras - plodded through the years with time drifting down onto him to lie like lead on his shoulders.
It was insupportable.
The road wove around the foot of Mount Baker. Cory drove competently, careless, his voice raised in a rendition of Who wants to be a millionaire? as he gunned his vehicle towards Seacouver. Life was good! Life was wonderful. He felt vibrant, energy crackling from his fingertips as his car ate up the miles.
Hed seen no traffic for an hour or more and now found himself gradually accelerating as the road opened up before him. One hand held the wheel, making the small adjustments required to keep the car on the road; the other had crept downward to his groin, first to cup and press against his erection through his Levis, and then, bolder, to open his fly, allowing the stiff cock to stand proud as his fingers returned to slide against slick flesh.
Breath shortened, but still he sang, alone in a small metal capsule that hurtled down towards the city of Seacouver. Cock pulsing now, he reached to grope in the grocery sack for a sheaf of banknotes, snicked the paper band that held them bound together with his thumbnail, and seized a handful, carrying them back down to his lap to wrap around the straining erection.
Laughing wildly, he began to sing again, The best things in life are free, but you can keep em for the birds and bees, I want money and felt the tingling tightness that heralded his incipient orgasm.
On the horizon, for the first time in hours, he could see the lightening above the road that heralded the approach of another vehicle.
It was seven hundred years since last hed cried, but now the moisture was springing to his eyes, fuzzing his vision as he drove away from his broken dreams. Giving in to the sorrow at last, he wept. Sobs escaped, bitter in the darkness, and the prickle of welling salt stung his eyes as tears coursed down his cheeks. Balling his fists, he pounded the steering wheel and pressed his foot down harder. The car surged forward as the engine growled out an eager response.
He screamed, as if that could release the pent up despair, and the cry was lost in the darkness as he howled his pain at the empty stars. In the distance, as though in response, lights glowed, increased and drew closer, flowers of light against the black sky.
The lights grew rapidly, and Cory put his foot down, his hand a blur as he stroked himself faster and faster. As he felt the boiling of pleasure tickle up from his balls, he let out a huge whoop. Joy, fierce, hot, almost unbearable in its intensity, suffused him. As he felt the sticky residue of his orgasm coat his hand, he let fall the paper with which hed been stroking himself. It fluttered down to lie between his feet on the floor, hundreds of dollars smeared with his semen.
Spent, he raised his fingers to his mouth to lick daintily, and as the car hurtled through the night, as the approaching lights grew brighter, he felt another, different tingle, this one deep in his bones - the kind that signified the approach of another immortal.
Oh yeah! he crowed, and adjusted the wheel slightly, directing the car towards the rapidly growing blaze of headlights.
The crash, when it came, seemed to happen in slow motion. A grinding, a bursting, all light and all time suspended as the two cars struck head on.
The crumpling of tortured metal, faint tinkle of glass were a canon shot reverberating through the darkness, the varied threads woven together seamlessly, until each new set of sounds overlaid the last, embroidered into a complexity that might well have been music, and the night was filled to bursting.
The lights went out all at once, as both men died.
Glass lay sprinkled like sugar, sparkling beneath the frosty stars. Bare metal glinted as the pale, uncaring moon rose to look down and sneer. Black blood seeped thick and sticky from the wreckage.
In the air, a blizzard, as greenbacks floated gently down, and from the tangled cars came a roar of palpable anger, thick and healing as honey, to mingle with Corys wild laughter.
Methos lived again.
The End
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