Rest for the Wicked

I walked alone. It was quiet, dark enough that I couldn't see the road, only feel it under my feet. No moon, no stars. Pebbles pressed through my sneakers. Silence, silence all around. Uneasiness began to trickle through my mind. When had the night become so quiet?

I stopped. Listened. Nothing.

I went on. Softly this time, aware of everything around me. Paranoia had served me well in the past. I wouldn’t let it down. Damn these pebbles anyway; when had this road become gravel? Gravel was too noisy. They’d hear me, they’d know where I was. Whoever they might be. I knew there was a they. Had to be. There was always a they. My heart beat faster.

I knew it. There were footsteps that weren't mine. Uneasiness was confirmed and became fear, and I reached under my coat for my sword. Only to find there was no sword, and no coat either. I looked down--my feet were bare, my legs in ragged trousers. Surprise erased the fear for a second, then my heart began to hammer as the footsteps came closer.

Run. I took off down the road. I could still hear Them behind me, steady, implacable, and I ran faster. It was Them, I should have known. Run, old man! They can't kill me if They can't catch me. Why would They kill me? Never mind, They were never benevolent, and how could They be? My breath rasped harder in my lungs. I was running, running, couldn't see where I was going, but They were still behind me. No matter how I ran, They stayed with me, They were coming closer, closer now, if only I could leave the road and lose Them, but there was no leaving the road--

A hand grabbed my arm. I screamed, spun around and flung my other arm over my face. I couldn't look, couldn't bear to see the eyes. "No," I whimpered, curling in on myself when the hand tugged at me, prying my arm away, turning my face up. It couldn't force me to open my eyes; I squeezed them shut, scrabbling backwards and abandoning all dignity. "No, please, I can't, please don't make me." It was no good, my eyelids raised of their own volition, and the glare hit my eyeballs--white light that separated, darkened, resolved into the faces of the dead--

"No! No! I can't, I can't do anything, no! No more!" The hands shook me, and I curled tighter, hitting out at whatever I could reach. They hit me back, hard enough to shock me awake. I gasped, choked, gasped again, dragging air into my lungs. "I'm not--no--"

My eyes weren't open after all. "Methos!" I opened them. MacLeod's nose was inches from mine. "Methos! Wake up!"

"Mac!" I gasped, coughed. I shoved him off me. "You're crushing me." I forced the breaths in, out, in. My heart still raced, and I shook with adrenaline. My cheek burned where Mac had slapped me. I tried to sit up. The sheets were wound around me like ropes, my boxers halfway down my ass from my struggles. I hitched at them and tried to breathe. Calm down, calm down. Calm. Down. There. "Hell of a dream." I tried to keep my voice normal.

Light fell in through the window, moonlight warring with the cold glow of the streetlamps. Mac looked at me with a rapidly swelling eye. "Are you going to tell me about this one?"

"No." I got up.

"It's been over a week since I got a decent night's sleep."

"Very sorry, I'm sure." I threw a sheet back onto the bed. "I'll check into a hotel in the morning." My throat was still raspy. I went to the kitchen. He followed me.

"You don't need to do that. I just wish you'd tell me what's wrong."

"I had a nightmare, that's what's wrong." I opened the refrigerator, changed my mind, opened the freezer and pulled out the vodka. I unscrewed the cap and took a slug. "I'm not the only one who wakes up screaming sometimes. Just leave it." I stared at the bottle. The freezer's light misted through the frosted glass.

"It might help if you tell me."

"Leave it, Mac!" I downed some more vodka. It burned like my sudden anger. "I don't need a shrink, and if I did, I wouldn't want you for mine, so just let it drop and go back to bed." The burn spread through my body, but it didn't relax me. Nothing would. The balance was too precarious.

"Was it Them?" Mac stepped forward and touched my back.

That was enough to push me over. I spun and slammed my palm into his chest. "I said leave it!"

I never should have gotten him involved. Never told him about Them, about where They came from, why They came. They were mine, and I was Theirs, and no one else needed to get caught up in it. My anger came from nowhere, everywhere, overlaying the fear so I didn't have to look at it. I didn't want to see. Please, Mac, don't make me see.

He stared at me a second, then slammed his own hand against the freezer door, stepped up to trap me between him and the door. I was tall. He was taller. Heavier. I couldn't move. The anger dissolved, leaving only the fear. "You proposing to beat it out of me?" Sarcasm, always, whenever I had no other recourse. "How long can you torture me before I break?"

He took the bottle away, set it on the counter. "Methos." His voice was perfectly controlled. "Do you want to be punished?"

Where was my easily goaded Highlander? "Sorry, Mac, I'm not in the mood for kinky games. Save it for Amanda." I tried to duck under his arm. He blocked me, threw me back against the refrigerator. Sarcasm broke and ran. I stared into his eyes. Couldn't speak. All that was left was the fear, and I was drowning in it...

He bent his head to mine. "Methos," his breath came against my ear, "do you need to be punished?"

No more defenses. Those brown eyes weren't angry, weren't puzzled, they understood. Mac knew. But he'd stopped judging; I had to do my own sentencing now. I turned my head, lacking the courage to say it directly to those eyes. "Please," I whispered.

Everything shifted. The world restructured itself and dropped back into place.

"Come with me." Mac took me by the upper arm, and I would have shrugged him off before, but now I went meekly. I hated this grip, like an errant child who couldn't be trusted to follow, but I made no complaint. I didn't get to complain, not in this reality.

He brought me with him down stairs, into the dojo, and left me in the middle of the floor. "Stay there." I nodded. I'd learned lifetimes ago never to argue with the man holding the whip. Or who would be, very soon. I wrapped my arms around myself, closed my eyes, opened them again when I saw Them painted on the backs of my eyelids. They looked pleased. That never promised well.

No light here, other than the dim streetlights leaking through gaps in the blinds. There wouldn't be. Mac wouldn't flick on the overheads and risk luring any spectators who might be wandering the streets at three in the morning. This was private. He could see well enough for what he was going to do.

Right now he was laying a out a plastic-back tarp. Yes, good. It was awfully humiliating to spend an hour on your knees scrubbing your own blood out of the cracks in the floor. Not to mention bad for the wood. Very thoughtful, my MacLeod. I giggled suddenly, holding myself tighter. Mac looked over sharply, and I shook my head. "Nothing. Nothing."

"Keep it down." Mac retreated to the equipment closet.

"Right." There was no sir here, no master or lord. No roles. This was no game, it was the three of us, MacLeod, Methos, and the whip, with Them as audience. The disciplinarian, the penitent, the scourge, the judge. Titles were unnecessary. We knew what we were.

There was a rustle, a slithering sound. Memory brought a shiver. "Come here." I obeyed, canvas rough under my feet. Faint light gleamed off Mac's eyes, off the sweat along his clamped jaw. "Take your shorts off. Hands on the bars."

I pulled off my boxers and tossed them to the side, turned and grasped the heavy wooden bars of the lattice. Mac pulled out the ropes and began to secure me. I'd worried the first time that it wouldn't hold, I'd rip it apart in pain-maddened convulsions. But it had held Mac in his Dark Quickening insanity, he told me. It would hold for me. It had.

I rested my cheek against the wood. Mac knotted the rope and stepped back. I felt the nakedness most acutely at this point. Not nudity, not just the fact I was bare, but the complete lack of protection. Utter vulnerability, tied and waiting, knowing to my bones what was to come. Knowing how deeply it was deserved.

"Pick a time. A place. A face, if you want. Don't tell me, I don't want to know."

A brother. A sister. I'd killed her, for reasons I no longer remembered. He had stopped eating. I breathed deeply, held it.

"This is for Them."

The tails sang through the air before they knocked my breath out. I tried to bring it back. Couldn't. Please, Mac, let me breathe--

Again. Knots, definitely, knots in the leather, causing enough pain to make me gasp, oh good, don't want to pass out after the first stroke--

Again. Still breathing, pain blooming across my back. I welcomed it, biting down on my grunts--

Again. Mac was a strong man; I couldn't have asked for a better--

Again. I yelled hoarsely. My fingers flexed, grabbed at the ropes, the bars, anything to hold on, to survive--

Again. Louder now, my yells breaking slightly into screaming. Pain shrilling along all my nerves, welcome pain--

Punishment, it's all for your own good, Methos, pay attention--

You need this, this is for Them, all of Them--

Did They feel it like this? Did I cause Them such pain?--

I did, I did, only right that it return to me--

Good thing Mac soundproofed the dojo when it was rebuilt--

Is there blood? There should be blood--

Knots ripping through my skin, there must be blood by now--

Not enough, not enough--

God, enough!--

Please, Mac, enough--

"It's not. Not by far. Scream, Methos. Let me hear it."

I was able to when the scourge came down again, across my ass, my thighs, ripping at my flesh, gouging its bloody trails into me. Screamed, cried, sobbed, begged for mercy that wouldn't be given and that I wouldn't accept if it were. My eyes were squeezed tightly now, and They were there, looking pleased. I pressed into the wood, doing my best to escape the knotted tails, which availed me nothing at all. My own shrieks were familiar as music.

Are You happy now? Please be happy--

Please let me rest, I'll give You my blood, my bone, just let me rest--

"Mac, I'm going to throw up!"

"Do, then."

I did, gasping in between convulsions. The vodka burned as badly coming up as it had going down. Worse. I began to sob.

"We're not done, Methos."

"I know."

Mac hit me again, throwing the scourge as if he meant to whip right through me. I screamed again, lost my balance and hung in the ropes, fingers twitching. Had to get up, had to stand, it hurt more when I had no support--oh yes, yes it did, it was so much harder to take this way. "Please," I sobbed, but it was indistinguishable from all my other noises, and the pain crackled like a Quickening, or maybe that was the sound of the leather--

More--

More--

More--

Please--

No--

More--

Stop--

Silence.

Darkness.

"Is it enough?" I asked Them, kneeling at Their feet. I didn't look up at the eyes, the thousands and thousands of eyes that stared without pity.

"No," They answered. Voices like wind, some booming, some whispering, some vaguely echoing.

Judgment. I bowed my head.

"Methos, wake up." A slap across the side of my head. I opened my eyes. I could stand, so I did. My breath hurt me. My eyes were blurry. There was a sour smell, wetness running down the lattice bars to the tarp.

"Did I die?"

"Not yet. Your shoulder dislocated; I popped it back in while you were out."

"Ah. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Hang on to something."

The whistle was so fast I barely heard it before the crack, and the crack was so loud it took a moment to register the ripping of already raw flesh. My scream was reflexive, a product entirely of the shock. It drowned out the next whistle, though not the crack, and the pain from that kept the scream going until I lost breath.

I had to breathe. Had to remember to breathe. They weren't satisfied yet. Breathe, Methos, and try to ignore those streams of blood running down your body.

It only took a few strokes to have me sobbing again. Mac's eye was perfect; he drilled the whip into me, into all the places that would hurt the most, lashes of pain that wriggled through my body and out of my head, my fingertips, until the pain was a mass that was bigger than I was, and every stroke made it larger, larger, it would engulf the world--

No chance to heal, it comes so fast--

There can't be anything left to vomit--

Mac, it hurts, make it stop--

Don't stop, They'll never forgive me if you do--

Please, please, please--

You bastard, I'll kill you if you stop--

How can such pain exist?--

They know too well how it exists--

It's my fault--

What I did--

I deserve--

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry--

Throbs rushed through my ears, dimming my screams. I couldn't stand anymore. I looked down at the body tied to the bars and saw my back was a sheet of blood. My head hit the bars and opened up a cut over the eye. More blood for the offering. How much was left inside? My screams were distant and hoarse, and bothered me not at all. I floated up to where They stood, watching the play below. We stood together. No one spoke.

"You're lucky," said a little girl beside me. Eyes older than the sea.

"I know," I said.

"He loves you. He does it all for you."

"I know," I said again.

"You'll have to pay for that too." A voice like the sea as well, relentless, cold.

"I understand." I sighed. "Now?"

She shook her head. "Not now. Another time."

"Will it be paid for?" I was suddenly desperate to know. "Will it ever end?"

She blinked slowly. "What price do you put on life? Some crimes are too much to be paid for. They can only be forgiven."

"Who can forgive me?"

She looked away. "There's no one left."

The weight sank into me, bearing me downward, back into my body that twitched in extremis. I was able to open my eyes and gasp his name before my heart gave out altogether.

The light faded, and all the faces turned from me. The footsteps began to recede. Only the little girl looked back at me, eyes deep and cold. "For now, Methos. This isn't ended."

I stood in my ragged trousers, in my bare feet. "I know. Thank you for the respite."

"Use it well. He'll need your love. He hurts too, Methos."

For the first time, I smiled. Crookedly, awkwardly, but a smile. "We all do. We're alive."

She nodded, and when she turned her back, the light dimmed and vanished. I sighed in gratitude, and let the empty darkness take me.

For a long time, there was nothing. No Methos the survivor, no world to survive in. Absence. Peace.

Had I died? I must have; Mac wouldn't have stopped if I hadn't. But this was no sudden jerk back into the living, this was a gentle tug back upward, as if through sleep. I opened my eyes. MacLeod looked back at me. Sun came through the bedroom window, lighting the hair that had escaped his ponytail, highlighting the shadows under his eyes. My poor love. I put my arms around him, and there was no pain. "Thank you," I whispered.

He laid his head on my shoulder. "Can you rest now?"

"Yes." It wouldn't be forever, but for the moment They were gone. The little girl's words echoed in my head, and I held him tightly. "Rest with me."