Part 1 | TBC (eventually, either here on on AO3)

Fandom: Highlander, Marvel Cinematic Universe
AU: Horsemen
Word Count: 961
Characters: Methos, Kronos, Clint Barton

Warnings: Temporary Character Death. Also, Kronos might read as creepy stalkery exboyfriend. (You do not want to know how much I have been muttering about canon!Kronos being creepy stalker ex while writing this.)

Methos wakes from an unexpected death to a very dangerous and familiar voice from his past.

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Waking up after he’s been temporarily killed is always both relieving and worrying. This time, it’s more the latter than the former, when he’d been killed by an arrow, broad-bladed and vicious, that had broken ribs on the way to punching into his heart. He hadn’t even had the chance to see who the Immortal presence was before the arrow thudded home, and drove him back against his SUV.

Methos waits a long moment before he opens his eyes, just breathing and enjoying the sensation.

“I know you’re awake, brother.”

And there is a familiar voice – craved and loathed in equal measure – that he had hoped never to hear again. Had thought he’d done a good enough job at establishing his own death that Kronos would not come looking for him.

Opening his eyes, Methos sees shadows above him, with only the darkness and dusty stillness of the air telling him there is a roof hidden up there. He has to turn his head to spot Kronos, perched on a railing, watching him with an amused smile.

There are others here, too, he can feel them, but they aren’t in his line of sight. Even when he sits up, there’s no one to be seen beyond himself and Kronos.

“An arrow, Kronos?”

Kronos laughs, and grins, standing up from his perch. “A little present from my Hawk, brother. Did you like it?”

“Not particularly.” Methos climbs to his feet, mentally marking the lightened weight of his coat. His sword is somewhere else. Not on the platform where he and Kronos are – but then, neither is Kronos’s, and that should be a comfort. He’s not entirely certain why it isn’t, other than his own long-ingrained paranoia.

“It’s just a broad-head. Nothing special.” The voice is coming from above him, and Methos looks up again, into the shadows that hide the ceiling, and more. He still can’t see anything up there, but he hears the creak of leather as someone moves. “You weren’t even the most challenging target I’ve hit.”

A stationary target, expecting someone who was a friend, and being entirely too open and vulnerable. Of course Methos hadn’t been much challenge, though to do so from where Methos couldn’t see him was at least somewhat impressive. A rooftop or a high window, probably, given that Hawk – whoever he is – is hiding in the shadows above Methos.

“Why use someone else to greet me, Kronos?” Methos refuses to use the familiar term that wants to roll off his tongue, refuses to call Kronos brother again. To do so means he is willing to step back into a role he gave up millennia ago.

“If you’d known it was me, would you have been so vulnerable?” Kronos lifts an eyebrow, circling Methos in a slowly closing spiral. “Or would you have run, again?”

“You know me well enough to know the answers without me needing to say them.” Methos keeps still, though letting Kronos pass behind him makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. To turn to keep him visible is to admit to vulnerability, and he can’t afford that here. Not with Kronos, and not when Kronos has company. A student, Methos would hazard to guess.

“And you know the answer to mine.” Kronos stops behind Methos, close enough for Methos to feel the heat of his body against his back. “I wasn’t going to risk you hiding again, Methos. I want you back. I need you.”

Methos closes his eyes, sucking in a breath. Kronos hasn’t forgotten how to manipulate him, though Methos wants to tell himself that it’s not working. Will not let it work. “Haven’t you learned how to work alone in all these years, Kronos?”

“I’ve tried. A dozen times. None of those I rode with were worth the time. Trash.” Kronos moves away, coming to face Methos, his eyes bright with passion. Fever-bright, perhaps. “No one understands the true power of terror like you do, Methos.”

He’d made the world so terrified of four men on horseback that they still told stories of them three thousand years later. Methos knows it isn’t something the modern world would understand his feeling pride in, even as he hates what he had been.

“You still can’t make your own plans, can you?” He can hear the viciously smug feeling that wells up in him in his voice, and he doesn’t try to bury it. There is no room for softness here, when there is an audience beyond just Kronos, and an unknown at that. This is not Adam Pierson, not the person he’s trying to be, the scholar who leaves fighting for others. He only hopes he can fit into Adam’s skin again when this is over.

Kronos shrugs, his grin knife-edge sharp. “I didn’t have the tools to make them work right. I have the ideas, but no one to make them into true masterpieces.”

It’s always the ideas that are worrisome. When riding the high of terror from their victims, Kronos always thought them – himself – invincible. That four men on horses could take a walled city, that they could do anything. Methos had grown tired of reminding him they weren’t. Grown tired of the killing, the fear. It had taken him centuries to extricate himself from that, and he doesn’t want to fall back on those patterns again.

“What did you have in mind. Brother?” Methos lets the familiar endearment fall from his lips, earning him another grin from Kronos. He hides the shiver that wants to run over his skin at the sight. He’s escaped this before. He can do it again. And this time, he needs to find a way to ensure this cannot happen again.