Disclaimer: Characters from the television series Highlander belong to Panzer-Davis productions. The plot is mine. No living creature was harmed in the writing of this fiction, although Simon's cat came close when she kidnapped the page I was working on and held it hostage under the sofa.

Warnings: For some stress, angst, possibly understated plot. Oh, and just in case you hadn't noticed, this may later contain sexually explicit material.

Into the Waiting Green
Jay Tryfanstone

Joe's Bar, Seacover

The old man had been gone five weeks and three days. It wasn't exactly the first time, and Duncan had guessed he was going. Something about the way that Methos had spent the coin of himself over the last few weeks, a dazzling, ironic, amusing cloak of personality laid down, with a flourish, at Duncan's feet. Something about the way his eyes slid sideways to the window when he thought himself unwatched, as if his heart would follow his eyes and wing free.
Duncan said nothing.

When you fly hawks, it's the moment when they leave your wrist and fly free that is heartbreaking. It's the hawk's choice to return to the lure, not yours, a gift. You feed them, groom them, accustom them to the smell of your skin and the sound of your voice, hope that the bond you make is enough to call them back from freedom. Sometimes, it's enough. Sometimes, watching the black knife-edged wings slice the sky, you can only hope. He'd kept the fridge well stocked, the past few weeks that Methos gifted him, and the hearth laid. Said nothing, watching that elegant profile turned away from him towards the pictures in the fire, waiting for the older man to pull himself back into the present and turn back to the chess board, with the corner of his mouth tucked under in an ironic and private amusement. Like as not one hand would have reached for the gold pendant Methos had taken to wearing under the layers of jumper and shirt and t-shirt, next to his skin. He'd not said anything about that, either. But he'd eased, oh so gently, into as much protection as he thought the old man could take, hoping he wouldn't notice that it was Duncan who sat nearer to the door in the bar, called him late at night, cruised by in the morning and asked him to breakfast. And Methos had acquiesed.

Almost, in the teeth of that mild acceptence, Duncan wished he had pushed the issue, asked what was bothering the old man instead of letting tension slide under the skin of their friendship unacknowledged. But then, the pair of them danced round so much already, a courtship of distance and ritual that cemented friendship and avoided anything which could be difficult, like the exact taste of Methos' skin at the hollow of his neck or the way his eyes went black, occasionally, at the end of a long night. Methos, look at me, Duncan wanted to say: when is the last time I bedded someone who wasn't you, when did I start wanting to lay claim to your skin, and the turned bone under it, and the convoluted, anarchic pleasure of your mind? When was it the colour of your eyes that spread across the blackness of my mind when I come, my own hand on my cock but the taste of your quickening in my mouth? I want you, Methos: come, make love with me.

Too late, too late, the moment when he could have spoken come and gone. He'd woken one night, very early in the morning, and felt Methos' presence send a ghost shimmer over his skin, echoing the lights that swung across his ceiling and the night-harsh diesel engine of the taxi. Methos was going, had gone, and Duncan lay alone in the empty spaces of the loft that echoed with words unspoken.

Five weeks, three days, and he was still alone, sitting late into the night at the bar under Joe's knowing and tolerant gaze with a glass of Loch Ord, iodine-black and bitter, untouched in front in him. He'd cracked, he knew it, for not two seconds before he'd looked up and asked Joe "Do you think he'll come back this time?" and it had not been casual: all the ache of wanting had loaded the words and laid them out like weights before a scale. Joe had taken a single breath, looking down at him with a washcloth forgotten in his hand, and then the rush of Immortal presence had rolled over and turned him to the door. It was not Methos, it was a quickening with an odd, uneven taste to it, old but weak: he'd already caught up his coat when the man walked in the door. He was carrying a sword openly in his hand, and his eyes were frightened: he was bundled in fur against the chill of spring. He looked across the room, blinking, and Duncan was rising: his gaze settled on the Highlander and the man was already walking towards him.

"Outside," hissed Duncan. "Outside, you fool. Do you want the world to know what we are at?"

The man stood still, feet planted on the floor as if he meant to swing for the Highlander's head on the spot. "Duncan Macleod?" He asked: his voice was strained, accented with a soft staccato rhythm that made Duncan's name sound like a stranger's.

"None other. And you are?"

But the man said nothing, staring at Duncan with wide grey eyes above accented cheekbones. His hair was long and dark, glinting crimson where the light caught it, his clothes either avant-garde hippy or a perculiar experiment in weaving wool and fur.

"Duncan Macleod?" he said again, and Duncan realised the man had not understood his first answer.

"Yes," he said, nodding (what kind of Immortal did not speak the lingua franca of the twenty-first century?) and without warning the man raised his sword and swung at him. His mouth opened, impossibly black, as Duncan threw himself backwards sending tables crashing across the floor, and his voice was higher and stranger: "Duncan Macleod, he is mine, he is mine he is mine!"

Duncan fumbled for his sword. The man was advancing between glass and splintered wood, roaring: his blade shone oddly in the light. Duncan, both hands in the cloth of his coat, stepped backwards, felt his ankle turn and flung himself sideways as the man swung down and the shot rang out-

And the man fell, slowly, astonishment wiped by oblivion, into the mess of a barfight Joe would be furious about cleaning up.

Duncan lay back on the floor and closed his eyes.

"Thanks," he said, knowing Joe would be near by now.

"It's my bar. And I stopped non-interference a long time ago," Joe said shortly. "Now are you going to take it outside?"

Duncan opened his eyes. They were lucky: the couple in the corner seemed to have vanished and the old man with the grey dreads at the bar had seen it all before.

"Just a moment, Joe," he said. He knelt, and began to search the man's clothing. "Did you hear his voice?" he said, finding a small package tucked into the wool of the man's jacket. "It was like two people speaking, and I could swear he didn't understand English."

"I heard," Joe said. "So what do you propose to do?"

"Take it outside," Duncan said. He sighed, looking down at the small package in his hands. Ten years ago he would not have dreamt of invading another immortal's privacy as he was just about to do. He unfolded the heavy, wrinkled paper and looked at what it held: a return plane ticket from New York to Seacover, paid for in cash, a tourist map of Seacover with Joe's bar marked on it in a sweep of black ink, and three photographs of himself, one dating to the nineteen fifties, himself seated outside a bar in Athens with Amanda at his side, laughing: himself coming out of the bar, head bent, and a full-on head shot, blurred, as if snatched through the window of a car. He was looking at the puzzle when his cell phone went off, insistent and tinny. He glanced at the dead man and untangled the cloth of his coat, extracting the phone.

"Macleod."

"Duncan, it's you. It's me."

"Amanda." He tucked the phone on his shoulder and ripped a stretch of cloth from the man's clothing.

"Duncan, I think there's someone after you. I took a challenge today - it was really wierd, the man never said anything: and when I went through his stuff he had photographs of you and me, and a map of Seacover. Remember, the hotel in Athens?"

"I think something's already got here," Duncan said, looking down at the body that was beginning to flush again.

"Oh, you won?" said Amanda, pleased. "Duncan, it's like he didn't speak English or anything: didn't even say who he was. He had a photograph of Adam as well, the pair of you sparring. When did you persuade the old man into playing with staves? He looked like he knew what he was doing."

"Did he say anything?"

"No. Oh, only, I'm sure he said something like he's mine, which is really odd, 'cos who did he mean? And when he said it, it was like someone else speaking through him, know what I mean?"

"Yes," Duncan said. "I do. Mine did that too."

The body on the floor twitched.

"Amanda, I'm going to have to go. Look, I don't know what's going on, and I don't . Do you want to come out here for a bit, you and Nick?"

"Oh, we're gone. He had the flat marked on the map as well, so we thought we'd head for a bit. I'll call you when we get there. Wherever. I just thought I'd better tell you...just.." Amanda's voice rose at the end, embarrassed.

"Thanks," Duncan said. "Take care," wanting to say more and not knowing what to say. "Look after yourselves."

He clicked off the phone and replaced it, staring down at the body. It moved: he moved, taking the strange man by the arms and dragging him outside, past Joe's stubborn, diasapproving frown. The man's skin was tanned, his features fine: his clothes were definitely handmade, and the knife he carried in a sheathe by his thigh was bronze, not steel. The sword Duncan placed by his right hand was old and well polished, a crusader's sword with the broad steel blade counterweighted by the two-handed pommel. It was a puzzle, and he disliked uncertainties.

He disliked them even more when the man was dead.

Waking, he'd quite simply snatched up his sword and rushed at the Highlander, clumsy and still weak from Joe's bullet. There'd been no skill in the way the man hacked at him, or in the way he moved, clumsy and without style: it had been the work of moments to slip inside his guard. He fought silently, and were it not for the fact that he preferred his head on his shoulders Duncan could almost have wished him alive and questionable. Methos, of course, would have had the man waking on hot coals in the first place: Duncan spared a grin for the old man, and moved the body into the shadows until the inevitable watcher clean up crew arrived.

Even the quickening had been bizarre, weaker than it should have been, folding home inside him almost with relief, as if the man had let go of a geas that bound him to life against his will. He hadn't wanted to die, but he hadn't wanted to live, either: Duncan tasted confusion, fear, and the overwehlming imperative to find and kill a man that bore his own name. There was something else as well, the memory of a woman's voice. He followed it, and the memory vanished, blanked out.

Three nights later it happened again. This time the photographs were different. Himself and Methos. This time, the man died screaming, unwilling, and the last word he spoke was a cry of pain and committment: "Akkienos! Akkienos!"

"Is this going to happen again?" Joe said, looking down at the second headless body to decorate his doorstep in a week.

"I don't know," Duncan said. He was looking at the photographs in his hands, the photographs that he'd found, with the plane tickets, tucked into the man's coat. That must be a copy of the one Amanda had talked about, he and Methos sparring, in fun: the old man could never be persuaded to take it seriously.

"....Duncan?"

"Can I borrow your computer?" Duncan said.

"Hell," said Joe. "I'll look it up myself if it stops the clean-up bills."

It took forty seconds, once they'd tried three alternative spellings. Akkienos: the people of the city. SUM. XXI: 1. trans ALJ. 32 vol. 3 pp56-76, Buchannan and Pierson 2001 2. Letters, Proc. OEJ 106 -

"Is that our Adam?" Joe said, darkly.

"What's ALJ?" Duncan asked, rhetorical: he was already running a secondary search. "Ah, Ancient Linguistics Journal...Come on, Methos, what is it this time?"

"What's that?" Joe said, reading over his shoulder. "Found in the cellars of the Iraqi museum after the second Gulf War, unidentified script akin to Cuneform B, at least 600 forms..proposed translation..He never mentioned this."

"He never does."

"And who's this Buchannan person?"

"No idea."

"And where the hell is he?"

"Next time." Duncan said between his teeth. "I'm chaining him to the bedpost until he gives a cell number."

There was a moment's pause.

"You do that, pal," Joe said, dryly.

"I meant doorpost," Duncan said, with dignity.

"Yeah, right you are."

TBC. Honest.