Disclaimer: Characters from the television series Highlander are owned by Panzer-Davis productions. I own nothing.
Written, and rejected, for the OnlyDuncanMethos Masturbation challenge. First of two, the second one being Whatever May Come, The World Keeps Revolving.

A Little Piece of History Repeating
Jay Tryfanstone
June 2003

'As for courage, Love "more than matches Ares" the god of war. It is not Ares who captured Love,
but Love who captured Ares,'

Agathon, in Walter Hamilton's translation of Plato's Symposium (Penguin 1951)
"more than matches Ares" is an internal quotation from Sophocles' Thyestes.

"But doesn't everyone come with their hand on a gun?" Methos asked. He blinked owlishly across the table, innocent, mildly interested, as if this was the most general of academic discussions.

"What?" Duncan said blankly.

Methos shrugged. "Well then," he said. "I guess not." He looked down, selected a peach from the fruit bowl, rolling it gently in his hands. "You know, MacLeod," he said. "there's a verifiable connection between sex and violence. Have you actually read Kraft-Ebbing? The man was obsessed."

"What?" Duncan said.

Methos looked up. His face was studiously blank. "Eros. The common nature of love. The physical rather than the spiritual. The black horse of desire." There was a knife in his hand. He turned the peach, cut down into the flesh. "That was what we were discussing, wasn't it?"

"I thought we were in Middle America, myself," Joe said. He was smiling, leaning back in the chair with a glass of unwatered wine in his hand.

"So did I," Methos said. "And I believe our friend was attempting to describe the sensations of a quickening." Juice from the peach welled over his fingers, dripped onto the plate.

"But how-"

"How else to describe it? MacLeod, what does it feel like when you come? Stars, bells, whales singing? Does the universe toll for you, or is it just flowers?"

"I can't...what-"

"Quite," Methos said. His eyes slid sideways, met Joe's bright gaze and held it. "There you are."

Joe inclined his head. "Point taken," he said.

Duncan was shaking his head. "I don't understand," he said.

Methos sighed. "All I'm trying to say, MacLeod, is that everyone's experience is necessarily different, and different every time. What's the easiest way to explain that to someone who's not immortal?"

The Highlander considered that. He was frowning a little, teeth catching at his lower lip. "You mean you don't see the little green men?" he said finally, and the corners of Methos' mouth curled under in amusement. "No," he said.
"What about the bright lights, the operating table?" Duncan was definitely grinning now.

"MacLeod, have you been lying to me all along?" Joe asked. "Don't tell me, you're not really Immortal and the Mothership's in orbit on the dark side of the moon..."

"Oh Joe," Methos said, shaking his head sadly. He put the knife down and held the peach tenderly in his fingers. "You haven't been listening. Trust no one, ok? That's the first rule of survival." He looked up again, and Duncan was looking at him down the table, through the tall glass candlesticks and the half-full bottles and the debris of an evening well spent, a meal definitely opson rather than sitos. He spread the peach slowly, watching Duncan's eyes: it unfolded in his hands, petal by petal, an opening chrysanthemum of sweet flavour. "Trust no one," he said, opened his hand and let the fruit drop onto the plate.

"Just Eros?" Duncan asked. "For you?" There was an honest curiosity in his voice.

"As far as I can make it," Methos said. "Think on, MacLeod, how close do you want to be to some of the people you've taken?" His eyes have darkened, a little. "The soul looking for a home...I remain my own person. At any cost."

"But love comes paired.." Joe breathed, and Methos flashed him a look that was infinitely older than the both the men he shared the evening with.

"Love is the expression of the desire to reproduce, to attain immortality," Methos said. "And given what we are..." He shrugs.

"You're wrong," Duncan said. "There is always love. Even if it's brief, even if it's ridiculous or forced or unwanted...there is always love." He didn't say the names that sprung to mind, but Methos could read them in his eyes: Tessa, Amanda, Alexa. Byron, Sean...

"For you, MacLeod..." Methos looked down at the peach, spread in helpless supplication to a greater force. "What can I say? We were born in different times."

"Oh come on, Methos," Duncan said. "I know you're the most ancient and wisest of the wise, not that you make it that obvious, but love is a constant in any culture. Orpheus and Eurydice: Abelard and Heloise: Tristan and Iseult..."

"Romantic fools," Methos said, with a tinge of contempt. "What about Hanako and the carp, or Titania and the ass? Love is folly personified."

"Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra..." Duncan was smiling.

"And how many of them lived to a contented old age?" Methos said. "MacLeod. This is a circular argument: look at what happened to Harmodius and Aristogiton..."

"Ah." Duncan pounced. "So you are not denying the existence of love, merely suggesting that love and violence are inextricably linked..."

"No, I didn't say that," Methos said. "I said sex and violence are inextricably linked, and I only said it, if you remember, as a by-line on the nature of a quickening. I left love out of the equation."

Joe is frowning. "But.."

"I'm not talking about domestic violence, Joe," Methos said. "Just le petit mort."

"You can't hinge an argument on an accident of language-"

"Can't I? Try me," Methos looked up and smiled, gently.

Duncan looked down the table. Infuriating. Wrong. He crumpled his napkin, dropped it onto the plate, stood up. "Night Joe," he said. He took two steps forward, and stole a slice of peach from Methos' plate. He watched Methos' eyes follow his fingers to his mouth.

"Prove it," Duncan said. He licked the ball of his thumb, sweetly sticky. "Make me believe it."

He turned and walked out of the room.



Methos blinked.



Then he blinked again, but the scenery had not changed and he was still breathing.

"I think," Joe said, dryly. "That was an offer."

Methos turned his head to the watcher. Joe was relaxed, still leaning back in his chair, the wine glass steady in his hand.

"Do you?" the Immortal said. "Personally, I thought it was a suicide note."

Joe raised an eyebrow.

"You're an interfering old man," Methos said, cross.

"Just because you once played with the devil," Joe said. "doesn't mean you always have to play devil's advocate."

"Bog off," Methos said.

But in his own bed, (because he is not a fool) later, much later, when he cannot sleep and his mouth is still sweet with the taste of plundered fruit, when language fails him, it's not Ares but Aphrodite who gilds the images in his mind.

Fin.

Notes:

A Little Piece of History Repeating owes a great deal to Plato's Symposium.