Interference, Chapter 3: Interlude
May. 29th, 2005 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseFandom: Highlander.
Title: "Interference, Chapter 3: Interlude"
Summary and Warnings: See previous chapters of "Interference" here and here. This is a bit of a vignette - Amy considers Watching, Watchers, and the Watched, and the ways the world can change. I don't own the characters, and I'm not making any money off this. This chapter is safe for puppies, kittens, and pretty much anybody who wants to read it. The only characters involved are Amy and Methos. Yay for Benadryl.
Joe had warned Amy that her subject would grow on her. At the time, she'd thought he was being too sentimental, too optimistic - too blinded by his friendship with MacLeod to see that what he had couldn't be the norm, that mortals and immortals were simply too different to consistently be friends. After a few weeks of coffee and chats, of watching her subject gesticulate wildly as he told some (probably over-embellished) story about his past, of marvelling at how much food he could pack away and still remain so thin that his sweaters always seemed on the verge of slipping off his shoulders, and then, when he found out that she liked jogging for exercise and endurance training just like he did, of learning just how he managed to keep that slim build despite unbelievable numbers of calories, and that it certainly wasn't a bad view once those bulky sweaters and jeans were set aside for a nice t-shirt and shorts...
Well. It was getting easier to see how someone might manage to treat them just like normal people.
This is dangerous, Amy warned herself when they agreed to jog together every day. Immortals and Watchers are not meant to fraternize together, she scolded as they bought iced coffees at an over-priced espresso stand by the lake. Never forget that he is the Other, she reminded when he suggested that they sit down on the grass to drink their coffees. Observe. Record. Never interfere, Amy recited as a blob of whipped cream from the top of his coffee drink attached itself to the end of his nose.
She was true to her oath. She let the oldest living immortal, a man who had lived through almost the entirety of human history, ramble for ten minutes about Ancient Greece and the 'true' origins of democracy before he noticed the fluffy white foam on his nose.
And now it was late, and they had long since gone from coffee to a bottle of French wine he'd pulled from a crowded cupboard in his flat, dusting it off and squinting at the label before shrugging and pouring it into a pair of plain glasses. Talking about the past turned to talking about the present, and back to the past in ways that Amy could barely follow - for the immortal, it seemed that everything was tied together in tangents and paths that she, having lived only a tiny fraction of his lifespan so far, couldn't hope to understand.
A few weeks had answered so many questions, and left so many more as much a mystery as they'd been when she first read his file. Five thousand years left a lot of gaps to fill in that bare file the Watchers had composed on the immortal named Methos, and he seemed intent on leaving as many gaps as she would allow. Even what he filled in seemed to blur the line between fact and fiction, legend and simple life. And yet, she found it hard to be irritated with his secrecy. After so many centuries of life, she couldn't blame him for wanting to keep a few secrets.
This is not interference, Amy reassured herself as she accepted a top-off on her glass of wine. I'm not involved. I'm completely detached. Scientific. It's all for the good of the Watchers. I'm just letting him talk, and taking heed of everything he says, for the record.
She'd been in the Watcher Academy during Joe Dawson's trial in the chateau in the countryside of France, aware through her instructor's lectures of the situation her 'family friend' had gotten himself, and all other Watchers, into. She was a fourth generation Watcher on her mother's side, and even if she'd only graduated tenth in her class, she knew perfectly well the consequences if a field operative was found guilty of heinously flouting the authority of the Tribunal, and the sanctity of their oath. Perhaps if she hadn't heard those stories, perhaps if she hadn't seen Joe wince every so often, when the weather went bad, and rub his shoulder with a memory of the shot he'd taken that day on the Chateau grounds, she would have fallen for the charming smile, the bright hazel eyes, and the deceptively childish enthusiasm at the simplest things in life.
Perhaps, if she wasn't also the child of Joe Dawson and, thus, a natural risk-taker and bull-headedly opinionated realist, she might have convinced herself that it wasn't at all tempting to let go, to forget about those rules, and ignore the tattoo on the inside of her left wrist.
Almost as long as they have existed, we have watched them from afar.
She was a Watcher. She had taken an oath, and it was one that she took very seriously. She was also human. And sometimes, she wished she could forget.
Title: "Interference, Chapter 3: Interlude"
Summary and Warnings: See previous chapters of "Interference" here and here. This is a bit of a vignette - Amy considers Watching, Watchers, and the Watched, and the ways the world can change. I don't own the characters, and I'm not making any money off this. This chapter is safe for puppies, kittens, and pretty much anybody who wants to read it. The only characters involved are Amy and Methos. Yay for Benadryl.
Joe had warned Amy that her subject would grow on her. At the time, she'd thought he was being too sentimental, too optimistic - too blinded by his friendship with MacLeod to see that what he had couldn't be the norm, that mortals and immortals were simply too different to consistently be friends. After a few weeks of coffee and chats, of watching her subject gesticulate wildly as he told some (probably over-embellished) story about his past, of marvelling at how much food he could pack away and still remain so thin that his sweaters always seemed on the verge of slipping off his shoulders, and then, when he found out that she liked jogging for exercise and endurance training just like he did, of learning just how he managed to keep that slim build despite unbelievable numbers of calories, and that it certainly wasn't a bad view once those bulky sweaters and jeans were set aside for a nice t-shirt and shorts...
Well. It was getting easier to see how someone might manage to treat them just like normal people.
This is dangerous, Amy warned herself when they agreed to jog together every day. Immortals and Watchers are not meant to fraternize together, she scolded as they bought iced coffees at an over-priced espresso stand by the lake. Never forget that he is the Other, she reminded when he suggested that they sit down on the grass to drink their coffees. Observe. Record. Never interfere, Amy recited as a blob of whipped cream from the top of his coffee drink attached itself to the end of his nose.
She was true to her oath. She let the oldest living immortal, a man who had lived through almost the entirety of human history, ramble for ten minutes about Ancient Greece and the 'true' origins of democracy before he noticed the fluffy white foam on his nose.
And now it was late, and they had long since gone from coffee to a bottle of French wine he'd pulled from a crowded cupboard in his flat, dusting it off and squinting at the label before shrugging and pouring it into a pair of plain glasses. Talking about the past turned to talking about the present, and back to the past in ways that Amy could barely follow - for the immortal, it seemed that everything was tied together in tangents and paths that she, having lived only a tiny fraction of his lifespan so far, couldn't hope to understand.
A few weeks had answered so many questions, and left so many more as much a mystery as they'd been when she first read his file. Five thousand years left a lot of gaps to fill in that bare file the Watchers had composed on the immortal named Methos, and he seemed intent on leaving as many gaps as she would allow. Even what he filled in seemed to blur the line between fact and fiction, legend and simple life. And yet, she found it hard to be irritated with his secrecy. After so many centuries of life, she couldn't blame him for wanting to keep a few secrets.
This is not interference, Amy reassured herself as she accepted a top-off on her glass of wine. I'm not involved. I'm completely detached. Scientific. It's all for the good of the Watchers. I'm just letting him talk, and taking heed of everything he says, for the record.
She'd been in the Watcher Academy during Joe Dawson's trial in the chateau in the countryside of France, aware through her instructor's lectures of the situation her 'family friend' had gotten himself, and all other Watchers, into. She was a fourth generation Watcher on her mother's side, and even if she'd only graduated tenth in her class, she knew perfectly well the consequences if a field operative was found guilty of heinously flouting the authority of the Tribunal, and the sanctity of their oath. Perhaps if she hadn't heard those stories, perhaps if she hadn't seen Joe wince every so often, when the weather went bad, and rub his shoulder with a memory of the shot he'd taken that day on the Chateau grounds, she would have fallen for the charming smile, the bright hazel eyes, and the deceptively childish enthusiasm at the simplest things in life.
Perhaps, if she wasn't also the child of Joe Dawson and, thus, a natural risk-taker and bull-headedly opinionated realist, she might have convinced herself that it wasn't at all tempting to let go, to forget about those rules, and ignore the tattoo on the inside of her left wrist.
Almost as long as they have existed, we have watched them from afar.
She was a Watcher. She had taken an oath, and it was one that she took very seriously. She was also human. And sometimes, she wished she could forget.
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Whee!
Date: 2005-05-29 03:48 pm (UTC)Re: Whee!
Date: 2005-05-29 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-29 07:23 pm (UTC)I really can’t wait for the next one :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-29 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 03:50 am (UTC)Patiently awaiting the next chapter.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 07:45 am (UTC)And I can't resist saying that your icon is absolutely adorable. *g*