Lower Tadfield Safehouse

Methos was just on the way back to his room as Jan left his.

"Hi," he greeted in passing. The other immortal was, after all, practically his neighbor and they were, after all, on holy ground.

From:

Without thinking Jan instinctively stopped out of sword's range then immediately berated himself for the mistake. It would have been wiser to just walk on. Even if Benjamin were meaning him harm he couldn't attack on holy ground and they'd agreed to avoid each other. The only effect moving on now would have was to betray fear, though.

"Morning," he greeted with a glare. "Come to spy on me?"

From:

"Actually," Methos drawled, "I'm just coming back from the restaurant. I'm not in the habit of spying on a full stomach."

He stopped to look Jan over. "Whatever in the world happened to you, Jan? You didn't used to be that fidgety."

From:

"I didn't used to have every immortal in the world after my head," Jan pointed out. "Or at least I didn't know it."

Had Benjamin just denied spying on him or not? And could he take his word for that? If he seriously were spying he'd deny it, wouldn't he?

Whatever he says, he reminded himself, you can't trust an immortal. It's too dangerous.

"And I'm not fidgety, I'm just being cautious. Which I have very good reason for."

He glanced down at his right hand. Thanks the the Sergeant's lessons his shooting had improved a lot, but he was still far from good enough to trust his skill to protect his life the way his swordsmanship used to.

Even without the loss of his thumb he wouldn't have liked to face either Benjamin or McLeod in battle, though. That little sparring match of theirs had been very impressive.

From:

"Suit yourself," Methos said. "You're only acting as if you're in mortal danger almost without interruption."

Loki had not planned for an opportunity to let his more mischievous sides run rampage, but he could hardly have created a better one if he had.

He remained where he was, hidden from view for the two, and observed their exchange, thinking hard and fast about possible ways of livening up their conversation a little.

"As if?" Jan repeated incredulously. "In case you hadn't noticed, there are three of us here and I ..." He stopped himself just in time but couldn't help glancing down again to check that his missing thumb really was out of sight. "... I don't know what exactly is going on with you and McLeoud, but if he's not going after you, he's obviously after me."

And maybe both of you are, but he didn't want to say that.

"You what?" Methos asked. "You don't trust us? Jan, McLeod and I are friends. Neither of us is keen on participating in the Game any more than we need to. Why do you think we've come to Holy ground? We're tired of it all."

Jan sighed. "Look, I don't blame McLeod for thinking I'm inexperienced enough to believe that, but you know my age. I've heard that lie before. Immortals can't be trusted. At least not if you're one of them."

From:

"It's not a lie, Jan," Methos said, putting all the sincerity he felt, and some that he didn't, into his voice. "It's nothing but the truth. And talking about inexperienced, you behave as if you have huge gaps in what you know about the Game and all."

Those two seemed to be getting along ... strangely.

Loki's eyes found the water sprinklers in the ceiling. Something should be doable with that without causing any actual harm to the inhabitants of the manor.

His gaze roamed until he had found the smoke detector. A fraction of a second later, a small puff of smoke sprang into being just below it, threading up into the system.

As intended, it set off both an alarm sound and the sprinklers, soaking the two men and leaving quickly-growing puddles on the floor.

Loki ducked back around the corner and moved quickly out of sight.

From:

Methos jumped as the sprinklers came on. He quickly crossed the hall to the alarm-off button and hit it. Still the damage was done. They, and much of the hallway, were soaked.

"Now look at this," he said. "Whatever caused THAT?"

Jan looked down at his soaked clothes in dismay. So much for going out.

"Probably some malfunction," he stated. "These things are known for false alarms and I think there are still renovations going on in some of the rooms. Maybe some welding work."

"Anyway, looks like we both need a change of clothes," he started back towards his room, his soaked shoes making squelching sounds with every step. Despite Benjamin's quick reaction he had to be wetter than he'd realised.

He'd have to check on his gun. And probably wait in his room for it to dry out. He didn't want to risk going outside without it.

From:

Methos looked around with a frown.

"I guess we better clean up," he suggested. "They might decide we did something and charge the damage to us."

Jan hesitated. He could afford to pay, but ... hadn't there been some small print about possibly being kicked out if one damaged something? He thought it probably only referred to vandalism and not accidents, but better safe than sorry. He needed the protection of this place.

"Just let me change into dry clothes first." He wasn't going to catch his death running around wet, of course, but that didn't make it any more comfortable. "I'll just ..." He broke off as he opened the door to his room. "Oh for ... Benjamin, the water's running into the rooms, too."

"Darn," Methos said. "Let's hurry. I'll run for a mop and some towels."

He turned and raced down the stairs to raid the tool cabinet without waiting for Jan's reply.

From:

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."

From:

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?"

From:

"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."

From:

"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."

From:

"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."

From:

"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?"

From:

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.

From:

"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."

From:

"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."

From:

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.

From:

"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.

From:

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?"

From:

"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?"

From:

That took Methos slightly aback.

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

From:

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

From:

"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."

From: