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Duncan MacLeod was, as far as he knew, neither a great sinner nor superstitious, but he was still wondering very intently which gods he had offended, when, how, and how to best issue an apology that would be accepted.
The source of the problem was this: Methos’s last Challenger had either indulged in a substance or suffered from a disease that made him very violently insane, and with his Quickening, the insanity had apparently passed to Methos, and Mac quietly thanked every deity who considered themselves responsible he at least wasn’t violent, because a violent Methos, let alone a violently insane Methos, would have been the worst thing Mac was currently capable of imagining. He didn’t want to wonder what a violently insane Methos might do and whether he could be contained, by what means, and what the fallout would be. He did anyway, a split-second of abject but vague horror before forcing his mind back to the present and concluding wrily that it was him, Mac, being punished, for all Methos was definitely the worse sinner of the two, because it was Duncan wondering how to keep his friend alive and make him snap back to himself as fast as possible while the Old Man was apparently having the time of his Immortal life, sitting on the ground and giggling to himself at what sounded like puns in dead languages. Mac was having a mild flashback to the heyday of hallucinogens, except in those times, most of those tripping balls were speaking at least something that could pass for an approximation of English. He didn’t really miss those times anyway. The music was creative, sure, but then the music had stayed while the fascination with drugs had faded, and good riddance to it.
‘Hello, do you recognise me?’ Duncan ventured, hoping the Old Man hadn’t forgotten him while maintaining awareness of the Game and wouldn’t use the weapons concealed in the overcoat he was still wearing.
He needn’t have worried. Vague recognition passed across the oldest Immortal’s young features. He even spoke the correct language, which Mac was immensely relieved about because he would have had to use Kronos to translate something like Proto-Indo-European or whatever the Old Man had actually started out speaking, and the sheer unpleasantness of dealing with Kronos or his Quickening in any way, shape or form aside, there was always the non-null risk of unleashing Pestilence upon the world. Which would have been a certain unimaginable disaster with Methos mentally impaired and unable to reason with or manipulate circles around Kronos.
‘Friend?’
‘Yes, I am your friend. My name is Mac. Do you remember your name?’
‘Cheese?’
Oh for… The Old Man had either forgotten his current identity, not remotely improbable with likely having had hundreds of them over the years, or was trying to joke with very poor timing. Well, Duncan would count his blessings. Mac and cheese was at least a thing, and even a thing of modernity. The Old Man was at least making associations, and ones set in the correct era. But he was not a cheese.
‘You’re not a cheese. You never have been a cheese. You cannot possibly be a cheese. You are cheesy, sometimes, a lot of the time, but that doesn’t make you a cheese. The poor innocent cheese doesn’t need you stealing its identity. You’re not innocent, and identity theft is not gonna help. I can’t believe I said that. That was a tirade of nonsense unprecedented in human history, outside of Monty Python.’
‘That was funny,’ observed the Old Man grinning, a full sentence that even made perfect sense in context.
He might be recovering, thought Mac with hope. Quickening weirdness didn’t usually last for long, Immortal brains generally snapping back to the way they were hardwired to act sooner or later, and the older they were, the more resilient they got. With Methos around five millennia old, he might in theory be able to shrug off just about anything given enough time. In theory. Of course, there were exceptions to every rule.
And Methos himself was a study in contrast and contradictions, he was capable of just about anything with a good enough reason and his brain… his brain just worked in ways unimaginable to mere mortals and most Immortals, possibly because he was from an entirely different time and had over a hundred times the experience of most people. Kronos had been (or still was, or would be again given half a chance, and wasn’t that a chilling thought?) also very old and smart, but he was younger, and he had been older at his first death, and he was more of a run-of-the-mill psychopath and less of a sheer if quirky genius, and even he didn’t understand Methos completely. Nobody did. Mac sometimes felt like he was friends with an alien from beyond the stars like some people in sci-fi shows, albeit in a very good way.
If Methos rebooted, so to speak, there would be no telling what or rather whom he would reboot to, although Mac would gladly take any version of his friend that wasn’t Death at this point.
‘Thank you, I appreciate your appreciation. Anyway, do you remember your name? It’s a damn good name to have.’
‘Adam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Edam is a cheese.’
Another sentence that made sense and was objectively correct and set in the current era, hooray for that, even if it didn’t exactly belong in context.
‘You’re not a cheese. I just told you.’
He wouldn’t let the Old Man live that down if they both lived for another ten thousand years.