lt_safe_house | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Date: June 4th
Location: Corridor
Status: Public (Methos, Loki, Jan)
Summary: Jan and Methos talk ... with a little help from Loki

It still made Jan nervous that he could feel Benjamin’s presence almost every time he left or returned to his room. Surely the other immortal could feel him too and what if he passed any information about his habits he learned from it on to McLeod?

He still hoped that Benjamin was more neutral than on McLeod’s side, but he was an immortal ...

Whatever Benjamin’s intentions towards him were, though, Jan couldn’t let them keep him from his shooting practice. He steeled himself and walked out of his room.

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Grabbing what he had announced, as well as a bucket for good measure, he returned upstairs, wincing slightly at the sight of the damp trail he had left on his way.

Jan hastily took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers even though they were already wet.

"How long have you been living here?" he asked in surprise when Benjamin returned with the cleaning supplies. Jan wouldn't have had any idea where to look for them. "I thought Miss Heerkens does all the cleaning."

"A couple of weeks," Methos volunteered. "I felt like taking an extended holiday from the Game."

Jan sighed. He knew when Benjamin had arrived. He had to pass his room every time he left his own, after all. He'd have felt him.

"A working holiday, I guess."

He decided not to press Benjamin for an explanation. It didn't matter after all. Though ...

"You're not ... erm ... in a relationship with the girl, are you?"

"What girl?" Methos asked. "The kid who's at the reception desk most days or Kirby?"

He started mopping up the water, or rather: trying to.

"In either case the answer's no. Are you?"

"Of course not, Miss Heerkens is just a girl and I suspect the Sergeant is in a relationship with Mr. Murdoc."

Jan picked up the other mop, gave it a doubtful glance, then experimentally swiped it through the puddle that was spreading into his room. It spread the water about a bit, but also soaked it up. Success. If he couldn't find a teaching job when he returned to Germany, maybe he could work as a cleaner for a while.

"So, if you aren't sleeping with the girl, and don't even know her name, how did you know where she keeps her cleaning supplies?"

"Why would sleeping with the girl tell me where the cleaning supplies are kept?" Methos wondered.

"I just went in the door that says "Janitorial". Also, things were needed before to clean up Joe's bar, and he's mentioned roughly where they came from."

"Well, it'd make her tell you things," Jan explained.

"You discuss cleaning tools with the barkeeper?" He'd have thought there'd be more interesting topics, but then again he'd done his best to avoid Dawson after their first conversation.

Methos chuckled. "I sure know better things to talk about when sleeping with a girl than cleaning utensils," he pointed out.

"And I don't know that there's a whole lot of things I'm not talking about with Joe. We're friends. Have been for years. He's okay for a mortal. Really."

"He knows about us, Benjamin," Jan returned. "About holy ground at the very least, probably also how to kill us. And he apparently knows several of us. When it comes to you against McLeod, can you be sure whose side he'll choose? And I am a stranger to him. Of course he'd choose to help his friend against me."

"It's nothing personal," he added with an apologetic shrug. "He does seem very likeable, but I prefer the company of mortals who have no motive to kill me."

"Of course he knows about us!" Methos said. "He's a watcher. They've been watching us for centuries, millennia. They keep books on our lives. They're scholars. Harmless."

He crouched down to dry parts of the floor that weren't quite as wet with a towel.

"They don't interfere. He's assigned to McLeod as his watcher, and he writes the chronicles on him. I can ask him to check what they have on you and who's assigned to you if you want to," he offered, not telling his - former? - friend that he had, indeed, already done so.

"He is what?" Jan had never even heard of watchers before. "They inform other immortals about us and you call that harmless?"

Well, at least he could be sure that nobody was assigned to him since he'd never been approached by a mortal that knew anything about immortals until he'd met Dawson. Maybe he ought to run before Dawson managed to alert his fellow scholars to the presence of an available study subject, though.

"They don't inform other immortals. They stay out of it. They swear oaths of non-interference."

Methos straightened and looked at Jan. "Many of us go for centuries, millennia even without once learning they are being watched. These guys just keep chronicles and records on us. Usually they don't contact us at all. McLeod and Dawson are different because they were in a bit of a catch together a few times, and they were working together to hunt down and remove some guys out for OUR heads. Non-Immortals who had learned about us, too."

He sighed.

"And Dawson and me is different because I used to be one of them. At some point I joined them as history student Adam Pierson, to ..."

Oh, shoot. Might as well tell him the truth instead of making up some wild tale.

"My task was looking for the oldest Immortal alive. Methos. He's supposed to be a myth, you know. Or maybe not. Anyway, I made sure I stayed one step ahead of myself at all times, so I had a pretty safe job." He grinned. "Anyway, they threw me out on my ear when they found out I was immortal myself. But Joe's a nice guy, good company, and a damn good bartender. No harm in keeping in contact with him."

"So you're telling me he's never helped McLeod kill another immortal? They're friends, but he'll just sit back and watch whenever someone's after his friend's head? Even though he could just contact the other's watcher and ..."

"Hold on, you were what?" He thought he'd heard McLeod call Benjamin Methos, but the name had meant nothing to him then or now. Adam Pierson made a little more sense. He had a few alternate names himself that he switched between every thirty years or so. It was easier than pretending to be his own son.

But when had all this happened? And was Methos a nickname he'd gotten for looking for that Methos? Was there really a Methos or was it just a sort of nickname for mythical immortals in the first place, something Watchers used to say 'Unidentified Immortal'?

"Yes." Methos said. "That's what he does. He does help McLeod figure out if an Immortal come to town would be likely to be after McLeod's head, though. McLeod really isn't into duelling any more than he needs to. Not the real hardcore "I'll cut your head off" kind of duelling anyway."

He mopped dry another tiny patch of floor.

"I was one of them." He hesitated. Then he put down his tools and rolled up his sleeve slightly, showing him his tattoo.

"See? That's the mark they wear. I was one of them and I got myself assigned to research myself. It was fun. After all these millennia, I get bored easily."

"And then what? McLeod peacefully leaves town until the other guy disappears again and Dawson calls him back?"

He frowned at the tattoo. That had to have hurt. "They couldn't have picked a less painful sp... Millennia?"

Methos shrugged. "I think they did it on purpose. Be willing to pay in pain for belonging with them."

He shook his sleeve back down. "Since I took my first head. The time before is... hazy at best. A bit much for a single brain, you know. Even mine."

"Nice fellows," Jan commented. "Why the hell did you do it?"

He didn't know how to cope with the idea of Benjamin being 2000 years old, or older, at least not right away, and he didn't want to think about him taking heads, so he decided to focus on those Watchers. At least they were perfectly modern and perfectly mortal.

"I was bored," Methos said plainly. "And I didn't want one of them accidentally digging up something I didn't want them to know. Like that I sleep as naked as I can get away with. That'd just be embarrassing to have in my profile, don't you agree?"

Jan blinked at him stupidly for a moment. Was he serious?

"Why ever would they care?" he asked finally.

"They just do", Methos said. "They're that kind of nosy. They like to keep records on everything any one of us does. It's like a science for them."

He laughed at the idea of a Watcher-University teaching Immortal Studies.

"They're essentially harmless. A bit bothersome at times, but harmless."

"Except for those occasional times they need live subjects for their experiments?" If they cared about useless details like that, they had to want to study immortals' insides as well and considering how hard they were to kill permanently ...

Jan shuddered.

"They don't do that," Methis told him. "They aren't scientists per se. More like... professional stalkers."

He looked around the hallway, which was still damper than it should be. "How much water IS in that sprinkler thing?"

"Because stalkers are so much less dangerous?"

Jan glanced over the wet corridor and up at the sprinklers as if actually trying to estimate their capacity. Of course was no water tank anywhere in sight.

"You'll probably have to ask a plumber."

"Maybe we should call one," Methos suggested. "But who'd pay for his services?"

He got back to work.

"They're harmless stalkers. They don't even publish their findings. They're also totally against saving anything on CD or using online databases."

"Because nobody can lose a floppy disk?"

Mopping up wasn't getting any easier. He still suspected that he was spreading more water around than actually ended up in his bucket.

"They were far from even considering the option of using floppy discs, I assure you. They didn't want any information digitised. They're as stuck in the past sometimes as some of our kind."

He shook himself, thinking of the time when Don Salzer had tried to do otherwise.

"Really, though, Jan. I know there's a lot of us around who'll go out of their way to fight, but as many and more go for centuries without touching a sword for anything but training. There's a lot of good men and women among us, and bad ones, too, just as with the mortals. We're not THAT differnt, you know. And running and hiding - what kind of life is that? It takes all the fun out."

Jan glanced down at the stump of his thumb. What choice had he but to run and hide?

"So why have I only ever met the bad ones? You'd think I've been around long enough, if thee are so many nice guys."

Methos raised his eyebrows.

"Maybe because the nice ones don't go into hot pursuit if you run away or try to evade them, but leave you alone if oyu don't seem to be interested in company?" he suggested.

"Or maybe you are just too trusting yourself," Jan suggested. "Making friends with our stalkers, letting me live to become immortal ... You seem to have survived it so far, but ... Don't trust them too much."

It was rather strange to be worried about another immortal, one older and much fitter than himself at that, but he couldn't help it. Benjamin wasn't just an old friend, he was someone from his own time, the only one left alive that had known him before his death.

Methos sighed.

"Jan, I've played this game for much longer than you've been alive, and I assure you, isolating yourself from every single one of the others will make you very lonely, and very dead sooner or later."

He shrugged.

"Besides - what better place to keep an eye on our stalkers than from the inside?"

"And talking to them nearly got me very dead much sooner. Yes, I have a gun to defend myself if it comes to that, but ..." Was it wise to reveal that much? Even to Benjamin?

He looked down at his hand again.

"Do you enjoy it?"

That took Methos slightly aback.

"Do I enjoy what?" he asked. "Life? Very much so! I fully intend to live another 5000 years, too."

"The danger," Jan clarified. "The fighting."

"I've gone for centuries at times without a single duel," Methos said. "I like being alive, and not getting into them has a way of keeping me alive more reliably than trusting in my skills to win."

"You certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself out there with McLeod," Jan hinted.

"I enjoy a bit of horseplay with McLeod as much as the next guy," Methos admitted. "It's good to stay in shape, just in case someone does come after me and running's not an option. Back when we met the first time... You know how I got to Europe?"

"You weren't born here?" Jan asked for distracted from his thoughts about the sparring session for now.

"Born? Oh no!" Methos chuckled.

"Do I look European to you? I was born in what's Egypt today, long before anyone ever even thought to name it that." He paused for a second. "Or found, rather than born. Not like any of us are anything other than foundlings. Taken on as the chieftain's own son, though, lucky me. There's worse fates for abandoned babes growing up in those times."

"Yes," Jan replied honestly. "You do. I never even doubted it back then."

"It's the hair," Methos said, as if stating something obvious. "Please tell me it's just the hair."

"Why? What's wrong with my hair?" Psychology never had been Jan's strength. People always confused him.

Methos nearly choked on laughter. "Oh Jan," he managed to get out. "You're just the best, you know that?"

"My hair," he clarified, then suggested: "Maybe I'd look less European to you if I let it grow out and put some Egyptian style to it, and maybe some kohl around my eyes?"

"Do they still do that in Egypt?" Jan didn't remember what the Egyptians had looked like when he'd last come through their country back in 1938. He hadn't been paying attention.