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Footsteps sounded cautiously near him as the scream of the quickening faded. Quickenings. Three. He hadn't wanted to take three, hadn't wanted to bear it. They hadn't given him all that much choice.
"Adam?" a gruff voice asked softly, hesitantly. Joe. Always Joe. "Old man? You okay?"
"They keep challenging me," he answered quietly. Hoarsely. "All these children keep challenging me, without the first clue as to what I truly am." He looked up, conscious of the blood on his hands, in his eyes. Conscious of the corpses, headless, three.
Two of them had knives in their hearts, keeping them safely down until he had time to kill them. One of them had a neat little bullet hole between his eyes, too. It hadn't had time to heal before ... The third had been the worst. Just swords, for them, once he'd eliminated the advantage of their ganging up on him. Just swords, and the stupid child hadn't even been close to a match ...
"Do they think they're the first to try it?" he asked, vicious, surprised by his own anger. But three, so young ... such a waste. "Do they think no-one's ever thought to cheat before? Do they think that every immortal they meet is just going to crumble, that no-one's going to know how to fight back just because they don't?" He snarled, staggering to his feet, ignoring Joe's steadying hand. "Does no-one teach them?"
"People teach 'em. They had a teacher, Methos. These ones. They killed him." Methos choked back a laugh, and Joe squeezed his shoulder, blue eyes staring at him in worry. "I was coming to warn you. To warn Mac. They've killed six immortals in the last two years. When I heard someone spotted them with you, I was afraid ..."
"You shouldn't be," Methos said. Darkly, bitterly. He laughed, soft and black, and turned away. "Do you know what 'outlaw' means, Joe? It used to be a punishment. If you broke the rules. No-one arrested you. No-one hunted you down. No-one had to. Because once you broke the rules, you were outside them. They didn't protect you anymore. Once you broke the rules, you were fair game, for all the monsters of the world."
He looked up, found Joe watching him quietly, found the understanding in those sad, blue eyes, more worldly than many immortals. He met Joe's eyes, and looked down at the corpses at his feet, and his smile turned soft and bleak.
"I'm the reason the Game has rules, Joe," he said quietly. "Me and those like me. We're the monsters waiting for the rules to break, waiting for someone to open the door and step out into the cold." He leaned down, closed filmed, bewildered eyes. Let the child go.
"And monsters always take the children first ..."