Fandom: Highlander, Duncan/Methos
Rating: PG-13
Archive: Yes.
Summary: Methos, thinking about Duncan. Not an extremely happy fic.

"So you sailed away
Into a grey sky morning
Now I'm here to stay
Love can be so boring
What was it you wanted?
Could it be I'm haunted?
But it's not so bad
You're only the best I ever had
I don't want you back
You're just the best I ever had..."
-- The Best I Ever Had, Vertical Horizon

Five thousand years, and I've never been loved like this. You want to devour me, eat me alive with your passion, make me yours every moment of every day.

The problem with that is that you don't know who I am. You want the personality of Adam Pierson and the prestige of Methos, but you don't want the heart of a man who has been broken and who has broken, whose deeds, if you knew their every detail, would make you fill with fury and declare me unfit to live.

I've read your Chronicles, avenger of the good. And I know that if I had encountered you in the days of the Horsemen, it's all too likely that you could single-handedly have been our downfall. As it was -- well, I just need to say that no one should ever underestimate the power of mortals.

Don't you understand, sweet Highlander? Part of me is still a Horseman. Part of me still wants to ride into the sunrise, striking down men as wheat. But part of me does not.

And in the end, what truly matters? What we do, or what we desire to do? What is it that shapes our destiny, our desires or our choices?

Oh, yes, Duncan, you chose to fight in all those battles, am I right? Am I to think there was no pleasure in it for you, that you really did all of that killing for a higher cause?

Or am I to suppose that you were drafted into them, that it wasn't really your choice -- probably the excuse you'd give. Nonsense. We make our own choices, as mortals sometimes cannot, for we have the luxury of time on our side and if the fighting gets too hot, we can merely slip away to cooler climes for fifty years.

Or maybe you were always fighting on the side of what was right. Really -- whose side were you on in the American War of Independence?

Oh, you believed it to be right, is that what I'm hearing? You the judge and jury of the moral causes of the world. Death is death, whether it comes to a Russian or an Englishman or an African. It doesn't discriminate. I should know.

What of all those heads you've taken in the Game? I believe I could tell you you've taken more than I have -- but you'd never believe me, and I'd like to preserve the illusion that I'm stronger for a little while.

The only heads I've taken in a thousand years for another reason than self-defense, I've taken because of you -- Kristin and Silas. The first because you could not, the second because....

Well, because I love you. Because in that moment I would rather have lost my own head than truly betray you. Because I too have learned to hate killing for its own sake, and what they were doing was going to be killing. Because sometimes the heart wins out over the mind, and runs riot with passion. Because I had to.

If I love you, I live with this. I am forced to make choices, to decide who is good and who is evil, to become judge and jury in my own way -- because that is who you are. And I risk your judgement on my own deeds -- am I willing to do this for you?

In silence I hand you a journal I have written, one where I relive many of the days of the Horsemen. If you are to love me, you must love all of me, past, present, future. If not -- then, you were merely the best lover I ever had.

END