Chapter Text
They drove back to Anne's place in their seperate cars. Anne had to go get her daughter Mary, so Methos knew he had time to make a stop of his own. He called ahead just to be on the safe side, though. When he arrived, one of the shop owners was already waiting for him, while the other was busy tending to some customers. Since this meant he still had a bit of time, he went and bought a box of chocolates made with sugar leaf instead of sugar. He had noticed that Anne had taken a liking to this plant for sweetening things. She was very disciplined with her diet, but obviously there was a suppressed sweet tooth there.
Apparently Anne had only just arrived, for loud wailing greeted Methos when got out of his car. Mary was protesting against unknown circumstances. Methos kept his distance, lest the little one might beg to be carried around. He was only too aware of the off-chance of his picking her up without thinking. After all, he had carried around so many children, even when it had been considered ill-advised by his then contemporaries. But now... Better not.
He watched Anne juggle with her things for a moment, then called out to her, "Don't worry about the groceries. You carry Mary, I take care of the rest. Good plan?"
She nodded, looking both exhausted and relieved. With a curt "Thanks!" she gathered the little girl up in her arms - the wails subsided immediately - and went ahead. Methos arranged the dozen or so plastic and paper bags so he could carry them in one go, shut the car properly and followed them up the garden path to the front door.
By the time he had put everything down in the kitchen, taken out a small glass and filled it with water, little Mary had fallen asleep on Anne's shoulder. He smiled at the two of them. He retrieved the box of chocolates and the paper-clad gift and set them on the table together with the small glass with water, directly in Anne's line of sight. Curious, she went closer. Methos stood back as she freed the small bunch of violets, lilac and lavender from their paper prison. She smelled them, bending her swan-like neck. His smile deepened with expectance. And indeed, her head came up with a look of surprise and wonder in her eyes. The scents had been enhanced with high quality essential oils.
"You are spoiling me, Adam!" she whispered a jocular reproach. "You're going to pay for this!" The gift had clearly been more successful than he had hoped.
"In blood?" he grinned, pulling up his sleeve and offering up the crook of his arm.
Anne rolled her eyes and replied in low tones, "Just give me a minute." Then she carried Mary over to her crib.
**********************
Even as they sat down together like conspirators, Adam still kept Anne literally at arm's length. Or kept himself at arm's length, as it were, for he never touched her. Poor man, this uncertainty had to be a horrible burden.
The excitement she had felt earlier surged through her again. "In medias res, shall we?"
He nodded solemnly, but his eyes shone with humour.
"Okay, then." Nervousness filled her gut, now that she finally had to put her idea into words. "My theory is that ... Well, you suggested yourself that it must be magic that keeps you alive like this." She looked into his eyes for approval, but their murky brown-green depth provided neither answers nor judgement. All they betrayed was curiosity. Unsettled, Anne continued more slowly, "My theory is that each of you is a kind of hub for this magic. Therefore, if I take some of your blood too far away from you for too long, it returns to the state it would be in if the magic were not there. And since you're ... old enough for this, yours turns to dust. You know, like any part of a human body explodes out in space once you remove it from the space suit." She wrinkled her nose. "Bad example, sorry." Stupid film she had watched last night...
Adam stayed aloof for a moment longer, waiting for her to continue. Then he asked, "So what is your conclusion?"
"We do the flu shot thing again, only this time you stay right beside me. No pacing the room or mowing the lawn, you know what I mean. Can we try that?"
Now Adam broke out a huge grin. "I'm beginning to like your theory," he chuckled. Then, more seriously, "The hub would be in our throat, then." He looked her right in the eye. He was taking her seriously, it dawned on her, but he dared not hope too much yet...
**********************
"I suppose I needn't tell you you have beautiful veins, right?" Anne's smile was brief and shy, gone too quickly, as was her gloved hand caressing the inside of his elbow. Now she was concentrating again on hitting the vein just right.
Methos commented dryly, "Thanks, that compliment means a lot to me." He waited, until she looked up at him with a somewhat embarrassed expression. Then he went on, "It means you're likely to come back for more." He held his features poised at that point where you're about to break into a smile. At her relaxing, he added, "Get back to work, my love."
Anne shook her head and rolled her large expressive eyes at him. "When you said you've been a doctor more than once, I should have realised you'd be a terrible patient."
"Touché," he acknowledged, entertained.
In the absence of further distractions - not that he wasn't tempted - she finally got the needle in and retrieved the necessary amount of blood.
Anne added the flu shot, shook the vial a few times and pulled her microscope closer. A tiny droplet was all they needed now. A few seconds later, Anne was looking through the ocular lens and watching in awe-struck silence for a beat or two.
Methos was curious, and therefore glad she slid the microscope closer to him. "Look! It's amazing! Just look!"
It took him a little while to adjust focus and objectives, but then he saw it, too.
Tiny flashes of blue. The same he knew from Quickenings and sometimes from his healing wounds.
They crawled around the edges of ... well, everything. Every red blood cell, every leukocyte, every virus, everything. What they were doing, however, was harder to tell.
"Any idea what's going on? What do you think?"
"Uh, let me look." She pulled the microscope back to herself and tried different objectives again. "It's really hard to ... Ummm..."
Silence fell, as Anne did her best to answer his query. A smacking noise here and there spoke of her discontent. He waited. Waited and watched. Her slender neck bent into an elegant arch. Her front teeth softly biting her lips, as she adjusted this and that. Her long fingers, busy turning knobs and things. Her coifed hair threatening to come undone. Anne.
Methos was tired of stopping himself from touching people, of avoiding contact. He could go on like this for a long time without problem, if he had to, but he loathed the restrictions. Even more than that, however, he detested their reason and he hated himself for how he had limited them.
Anne and Mary aside, he could not afford to wipe out mankind. He needed mortals. He needed their books, he needed their art, and life among them. They kept him sane. And alive, for they were his hiding place. And alive inside. He had been dead inside too long and never wanted to...
"Oh. My. G... What the heck IS that virus?!" Anne's subdued exclamation cut into his train of thought. Before Methos could tell her he had no idea, Anne added, "Just look at this thing!"
Carefully she slid the microscope back to him. "It's got frigging antlers or something - look! On the far right, bottom corner." Not that there really were corners, but he soon found the object she was referring to.
He watched it. The "antlers" were not very long, but there was something creepy to them. Then he realised they were not still like antlers. "Not antlers," he told Anne without taking his eye off the ocular lens. "Rather like snail feelers." Breathlessly he watched one of them stretch toward a red blood cell. It touched the cell, but instantly recoiled.
He slid the microscope back to Anne. In a voice that sounded monotone to him, he reminisced, "I was once asked by a madman if electricity could be sentient. Now I wonder just how mad he was."
"So it's not just me? The virus really is the only thing that's not covered in an electric current of sorts?"
Methos gave her wording serious thought. "I don't think it really is electric. It just looks that way to worldly eyes. It's how it expresses itself. - No, make that how it releases superfluous energy. Either way, I don't think you can put this in an electronic microscope and expect results."
At this, Anne's face fell, and Methos laughed. "Sorry to be so disappointing."
"No, I..." she began hurriedly. Then she smiled. "Sorry. I just hoped for too much."
"Patience, ma chérie. Keep watching that virus. I think something's happening there."
"Seriously?" Her eyes almost bulging, she dove quickly to look through the ocular again. "What the Dickens!? It lost an antler while we were talking!"
After a few moments of concentrated silence, Anne explained, "You were right, something is happening here. It's going real slow, though. It's like... The virus keeps trying to touch things, and each time it seems to melt a little where it touched that ... I'll call you current, k?" By now she was so absorbed by what she was doing, she was mumbling to herself rather than speaking to Methos. "Whatever does that mean?"
Methos replied, "Magic protects what belongs to me. The virus is not a part of me. I'm afraid I'm not going to be very helpful to you." Up until now he had not realised this could sadden him.
Anne looked back at him, serious. Solemn. "The real question is: Can I be helpful to you?" Her eyes left his. Maybe he had given away too much. She seemed shy now, speaking in a low voice. "I want to try."
Methos concentrated on acting and making his voice sound light-hearted, his grin big. "I shall be happy to let you." He paused and silently counted to three. Then, as if it were an afterthought, "Perhaps not today. It's getting late." He needed to be alone, beat the crap out of a sandbag and then think all this through systematically on his own. Things played into this that Anne was better off not knowing.
**********************
Joe's raspy voice sounded strained. "We need to talk." They hadn't spoken since the day Cassandra had almost taken Methos' head. Oh, yes, they did need to talk.
The telephone line crackled so loudly, he might as well have been in rural Mongolia instead of a log cabin in the outskirts of Seacouver. When the noise reached a reasonable level again, Methos answered, "We are talking."
"Don't talk to me like a teen!" Dawson thundered. "You know exactly what I mean. Eye to eye, man to man. I've got to know where I stand with you, and you know damn well that I do!"
"I have reasons for not coming near you right now, Joe, you're ... " he sighed. No, you didn't tell a man he was too frail, no matter how sound your reasoning was. "Joe, you're one of very few people I consider friends. I hope I can come and meet you soon, but there are things I must attend to first. Besides, I'd rather not meet MacLeod just now. He might have retained a grudge..." A half-truth, if ever there was one. Several of them, in fact. As often in his life, half-truths would have to add up to some sort of truthfulness.
"Fine." Clearly Joe had uttered that syllable through gritted teeth. "You've got three days."
"Joe." Thankfully, Joe didn't hang up on him. "As a token of peace, I have a secret to share with you." Dawson grunted gruffly, but Methos knew he had a foot in the door now. Joe loved secrets, and he could be trusted to keep them. Methos proceeded to explain in general terms what he and Anne had discovered. "Consequently, I gifted her with a state-of-the-art optical microscope," he was now saying, remembering Anne's delighted squeal and her giggle at being called a material girl. "We think that the flu shot isn't a tough enough challenge. After all, the viruses are half dead." He shrugged. "So now we are looking into different alternatives, and I really, really have to finish this now. I don't know if there will ever be such a chance again: a research partner I can trust without reserve. How often in your life have you met someone like that?"
"More often than you have, from the sound of it."
"Burnt child, Joe. Scorched. It takes a lot to trust after you've been through that time and again." Methos noticed dirt under his finger nails. Remainders of chopping wood and doing some less noble chores earlier. They were the rent he'd agreed to pay for the use of the cabin.
The grunt was softer this time, Joe was relenting. Methos was longing to hear him sing - it would have told him more about what Joe was really feeling. And it had always made Methos feel connected to him.
"I trust you, Joe. And Duncan. And now her. That's a lot of people, really."
"Is that your latest version of verbal puppy eyes?" Trust Joe to put his finger on the weak part of an argument. On the other hand, the snark was a good sign. Laying open your distrust required a measure of trust. Methos smiled briefly.
"I daresay it is. Give me two weeks, I beg of you."
A sigh, and a long pause.
"Dawson?"
"Fine," Joe consented grudgingly. "Two weeks."
The line went dead.
**********************
Methos had not ordered just one microscope, but two. Now he was sitting in front of the one he hadn't given to Anne, shot vials, blood samples, syringes and things surrounding him on the table. A leaf of paper was filling with systematic, but fairly illegible notes on his results.
Science had always been in his blood - long before it had become a known concept. When he had encountered its roots in Ancient Greece, it had been like his mind was coming home. And the more it had evolved since then, the more dominated it was by logic and systematic exploration, the stronger his sense of having found a home had become.
So science had always been in his blood. And now, he mused with a sense of foreboding, his blood was seeping into science, most likely.
**********************
"Anne!" he greeted her excitedly over the phone.
"Uh ... hi! Adam? ... Morning." She sounded dog tired.
"Did I wake you?"
"Err..."
"I did. Sorry."
"It's okay."
People who insisted on polite lies did themselves no favour around Methos. "Oh, good, because I've had a revelation!"
There was a brief moment of silence, then a low chuckle. "Really?"
"We must do the flu shot thing once more. We never watched what happens as you mix blood and shot. What if it's an instant thing?"
"Umm, uh..."
"Exactly!"
Anne laughed.
"Okay, okay. Just not right now."
Now it was Methos' turn to laugh. He had obviously overdone the eager student bit. "Of course not. Let me know when and where. I'll be there. Bye for now, my sweet. Sorry to have woken you."
He rang off.
**********************
Anne's hand was trembling as she placed the drop of flu shot on the tiny glass sheet, and the glass sheet in the confocal light microscope. Once that was done, she exhaled. Fine. Now the ... No, she wanted to get a look at it first.
"Oh, whammy, these things are slow. You know, I've never bothered to actually have a look at one of these. It's eery." She realised she was babbling. Adam's watching her in silence didn't exactly relieve her nervousness.
Anne looked him in the eyes, and instantly thought of hot caramel chocolate. She wasn't even sure why, because right now his eyes looked definitely green ... ish. Olive on the outer rim, she thought, with amber flecks near the iris. Full of warmth, at any rate. He was smiling at her, his soft lips distracting her. It was as if his eyes tried to tell her something urgent that his mouth wouldn't share. She swallowed. "Ah, where were we?"
His smile widened into a wicked grin. "You were asking me to shed blood for you." He stretched out his hand. Long, strong fingers, finely chiseled, but with wide tips. Haltingly, she put the syringe into his palm. It was hard to resist the urge to touch her hair, she noted irritably.
"Isn't that what knights in shiny armour are for?" Anne tried to enter into banter mode, but her voice didn't hit the right note.
"Not their own blood. Well, not preferably, as *you* would have it. - Besides, my armour isn't shiny. And it's a good thing I'm not wearing it at the moment," he added while pricking his skin with the needle. He picked up the droplet that formed on his skin, asking "Will this do?" as he handed her the syringe.
"Let's have a look." Again she held her breath as she watched through the ocular lens as the magnified point of the needle trembled above the fluid on the glass sheet. She waited for the right moment, then set it down. "Mixing" wasn't easily done under the circumstances, so for the moment she didn't try. Instead, she concentrated on what happened when she dropped another tiny sheet of glass on top of the fluids. A few tiny adjustments, and she got a much improved view of the sample. She looked out for areas where the two fluids where only just starting to mix properly - clusters of flattish platelets and woolly-looking leukocytes contrasting with less densely populated areas with the prickly balls that were influenza viruses. Ah, here, this area looked promising!
She gasped, "What was that? It's like... Again! You know, I think it's that current..." She wanted to call it a current of magic, but the scientist in her just couldn't accept that. "It shoots leukocytes at the viruses. That's what the antler thing was. There's one developing right here. As soon as a virus touched something, a t-cell was launched at it - bam! Like someone's playing a video game." She was shaking her head and again grew aware of being watched. "By the way, you don't seem to have an overly high lycocyte count, overall. You're just using them more efficiently."
She lifted her head off the microscope again to address him. "You know something?"
His eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
"I don't think any germ survives long enough in your bloodstream to say, 'Hello, my name is Lactobacillus casei'." She smiled her most encouraging smile. "But if you want, we can see if we find any virus on your skin, in your spittle, the works."
His answer "I'd love that" clearly came from the heart. She just wasn't sure what method of looking for it he was thinking of...
**********************
Joe entered his flat. There had been nothing funny about the lock, but now his sixth sense told him something was off.
Without moving, he looked around the space he had just entered, a tiny anteroom with a coat-rack, shoe-racks and hats. Normally there'd be the crutches, but he'd left them in his bedroom. His gun was there, too.
He reached for a heavy wooden hanger and moved on as quietly as possible. By the time he'd reached his bedrooom door, though, he was breathing like a walrus. He threw the door open, the hanger raised for attack - and found Methos smiling up at him innocently, sipping beer from one of Joe's own cans. Of course. "I was a little early, so I let myself in."
"Five days early. You could have called."
"Consider it a compliment that I trust you further than I do telephone lines."
"You could have called AHEAD." Joe dropped his tired bottom onto the bed, where Methos had been sitting. "I'd have stocked up on beer."
"By the time I've finished telling you, you'll want a stronger beverage, I fancy." The tone was light, but you never knew with this Immortal.
"So? Tell me."
The account he got was short and neat, a summary that probably left some things out, but still... "And did you have any virus anywhere?"
"That's the funny part, yes, I did. I mean, I do. There are some germs that actually are protected by the magic. I expect they came with the package when I turned Immortal. My body's state was frozen in time, I imagine."
"So the big question how you turn Immortal is even harder to answer than before."
"True." Joe was exceptionally good at reading people, but Methos right now? The proverbial book with seven seals.
**********************
"Just one thing before I go." He took a deep breath and in a cultivated, vibrant tenor, he sang,
"Oh, charming lady dark of hair,
oh chaste young maiden true and fair,
wouldst thou take my proffered hand
and me for thy wedded husband?"
Anne was genuinely out of words. While he had sung, he had not been the man she had come to know, he ... he had been somebody entirely different. How could this be? Who was he really?
She was not given much time to contemplate the question, for he continued in his normal, casual tone of voice, "Feel free to take this personally on basis of the contemporary understanding."
"Uh ... pardon?"
"It's not genuinely medieval, and if it were, it would not mean what you think." Another one of those maddeningly enigmatic smiles. You never knew whether he was pulling your leg or educating you for real... "I wrote it just for you, and... " He put on his coat, opened the door and turned to face her again, already half outside. "... you'll hear it a few times yet." He winked, and closed the door behind him.