Walking the Witch*
She tried to clear her mind, but the energy in the room was still too high for sleep. She was remembering that first night in her dreams-the running. The not daring to look back. The single-minded desire to just get away-whatever it took. Her hands had stung long after stabbing Kronos, and his scream rang in her ears as if it had come from something not human, but that hadn't been the worst.
The worst thing, the unforgivable, unforgettable, horrible thing about it all was that she felt nothing.
Nothing.
In the time before, she had felt sorrow, she had felt rage, blind fear, and thousands of unnamable agonies over the years, but once she had the opportunity-there was nothing. Not relief. Not more fear, as if more fear would have been possible. Nothing. She had felt nothing. She only ran into the night and hoped the goddess would look favorably on her, but she didn't expect anything.
If she had learned anything, it was not to expect things. The things she expected might never come-the things she got were often more horrible than could have been expected.
It was surprising to find that that ghost still walked: nothing. A fear of nothingness. "Nothing" might just have been the defining word of her life. The hardest part of coping with a long life was an equally long memory following her-sometimes a little too clear, too unbleached by time.
She could remember Hijad saying, "We have nothing you want."
Nothing they wanted. But there was one prize pulled out of her village, wasn't there? They left nothing behind, and they took her, because something about her pleased Methos. Didn't it? That was the part that had hung around her neck at first. She still lived, and the rest of her people were dead. He let her believe that-that she lived because he wanted her to. She might have given her life for any one of those people when she reflected on it-but what was left of them?
Nothing.
Nothing but herself. Nothing but her memories. And while she ran, not knowing what next, or where to, or how to even survive, or even if she would without Methos, she began to see what she had that she could depend on, and what she could look forward to.
Nothing.
Nothing but herself, of course. She grew strong on that, and found her voice, and learned to take the world as she found it. Strange how easy it was for that feeling to come back-that feeling of nothingness.
She threw back the covers, realizing now that sleep was impossible. She flicked the switch on the lamp by the bed wanting light, but found herself looking through the nightstand drawer for the lighter. It was candlelight she wanted-sometimes nothing else would do. And perhaps a touch of incense. She pulled things together, moving her hands without thought. She barely needed to look for anything. Keeping things straight was another lesson she learned. Methos made sure once that she learned that-it pleased him. But the lesson applied to more than just tangible things. Her hands reached for them. Rosemary. Bay leaf. Cedar. Myrrh. Time to get some things straight. If her memories wanted to speak, all she could do was listen. Maybe if she heard them out, they would leave her alone.
Sure. The way Methos would have left her alone if she chose to hear him out. But there are some voices it's best not to listen to. What had he been saying? That she shouldn't hate herself? Didn't he realize that she was past that? She had tried to explain that she was no longer his sorry little slave, but as she listened to him speak, she realized that there was no point in trying to tell him that. She almost wondered what he was trying to accomplish by talking to her-comfort her? As if he cared. Console his own conscience? As if he had one. It struck her that even he might not have known was he was trying to accomplish.
He said that she had forgotten what he was. No, that hadn't been it. She hadn't forgotten what he was-she simply never knew what he was. She never knew.
A bit of gutter Egyptian slipped out as a stray spark came up from the charcoal. "There's speaking maat," she said out loud. She knew there were no accidents. Her hands sometimes shook thinking about him, even still. At the very least, thinking about him never helped her mood. She wished she could get that conversation out of her mind, but she knew better. He never made it that easy. Even after she could find it in herself to despise everything about him, she could still appreciate the mystery.
There were things about Methos even he didn't know.
She had thought she knew him. She had been certain of him, once. She saw the side of him that wasn't a killer. There was something in him that could feel. He could talk gently, and behave decently, and see beauty-he could tell her he saw beauty in her, and touch her that way. She even thought that side might just be the "real" Methos. Being a Horseman? That was just-necessity. But it wasn't the real Methos.
Kronos had proved her wrong about that one, then. But even Kronos hadn't been totally right about him, had he? Certainly not in the end?
She closed her eyes tightly and inhaled deeply, held her breath, and then tried to breathe it out. She visualized a light pushing out the darkness at the corners of her mind, but the darkness just kept coming. Sometimes it would do that. It didn't last forever.
("Let it come," she told herself. "Sometimes it just has to come.")
Kronos had thought the real Methos was a Horseman, and that was it. But even that was-a mask. Something he could cast off, the way he cast off people. But no. Even the feeling of being cast off-just the tiniest sense of that-that wasn't what bothered her the most about him.
She sank into a cross-legged position on the floor, and told herself it was over. At the very least, the worst of it was over-and by the Old Ones, the worst of it was horrible enough when Kronos and those other monsters showed up at the door like something from her nightmares. But they were gone, now. Dead. Ghosts-they could no longer harm the living.
But Methos still lived. Duncan had seen to that, even after seeing what he had been. Even knowing what the man could still be, Duncan wanted the man alive. Even seeing-
But maybe he didn't see. Not really. He didn't see it, not even when she explained the truth to him. Methos wasn't his friend-maybe he didn't have it in him to be anyone's friend. But she saw it. It came home to her when she saw him, sobbing. Pathetic. She could have put him out of his misery, and hers, right then. Duncan stopped her, but she might have even stopped on her own, once she had seen it. Maybe what she had seen then was a glimpse of the real Methos, stripped bare of the masks, the lies. The illusion. She almost pitied him.
She had once thought that she was nothing, but seeing him that way-a lot of things made sense that hadn't before.
She couldn't ignore the fact that the sun was coming up. She opened her eyes and could see the rays gleaming pink in the smoke from the censor. Could she really have spent another night thinking about this? It was hard to believe-it was over. None of it could still matter, and continuing to think about it did no good for herself-or anyone else, for that matter. Sleep-now that would do some good-just some healing, restful sleep, and to get on with her life.
She felt a bit like she had pieced out some of the mystery, though. There was a time when what she had seen-his agony-might have pleased her. It hadn't, though. In fact, it made her sad. Sad, and a little disgusted. Disillusioned, perhaps. Perhaps even that.
It was almost like a proof. Methos is no one's friend. Methos is his own friend. Methos is-no one. Maybe that was the secret to how he could have done all the things that he did. Maybe it was the secret to his success at living so long, far all she knew, but it was a bitter secret, at best, and at worst, it was a waste. But she knew then she couldn't continue hating the man she knew back then-the man who made a slave of her, the man who made her taste death every day, the man who almost made her love it-because he simply didn't exist.
She stretched and yawned. Maybe she could grab a few hours rest, after all. She rose, and blew out the candles. She no longer needed them-it was getting light.
Methos might be younger than the Sphinx (although not by so much, she noted, wryly), but he carried a more interesting riddle than the Sphinx ever did. If he wasn't a monster, wasn't a master, wasn't a Horseman-if he wasn't a friend, an enemy, or anything else to her-what the hell was he? She thought she knew the answer, and it left her cold. But then, she had thought she had him figured out before.
But for now, just for now, the answer was-nothing. And she didn't need any power to know that there was an emptiness he'd carry around with him everyday for as long as he lived. And even having no expectations, and not daring to guess that she knew him, she still thought that might be a very long time.
That was enough.
*("Walking the witch" is taken from a quaint torture used during the burning times. The Inquisitors would keep a suspected witch awake-for a very long time. Without sleep, things happen to a person's mind. Not very pleasant things. After weeks of this, the "witch" was likely to confess to anything. Memories can be like Inquisitors, sometimes. But really, I'm just being obscure. I always say, if you can't be profound, be obscure, and some people will think you're profound. Oh, and speaking maat is a term for speaking the truth. The most important thing in Egyptian magick was being a truth-speaker. Sometimes the truth sounds like gutter Egyptian. Particularly the bits about dung beetles.)