AO3 | DW

Fandom: Highlander
AU: Sea and Wolf
Word Count: 2183
Characters: Alysse (OC), Joe Dawson, Methos
Warnings: Suicide, Original Character Death

“He was… everything. Wild wolf of the steppe, sharp and fierce as winter winds on a northern sea. The thunder of hooves beneath me; wild, joyous laughter reveling in all we were.”

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“You’ll know when it’s time to come, before I have to find you.”

The last words Kronos had spoken to her still echo in the still watches of the night, when her ship sits silent on flat and brooding seas. A cruel lash of what will never happen, as her Watcher quietly told her after making port one day. He’d slipped away to make his report, and to gather what he could about “Melvin Koren”, no doubt with the explanation that he’d like to know if he needed to make himself scarce from her ship. The heart-shattering blow was so softly delivered she almost didn’t feel it at first.

Now, she sails alone in a boat that had been carefully designed for her, and built for her as a present. Lying on her back on the polished deck to stare blind-eyed at the stars that glint in cold patterns set in a midnight sky of inky black. Trying to piece together a soul that doesn’t wish to mend, struggling to remember why she clings so fiercely to life.

A wildness has been stripped from the world, and taken with it her fire – it seems, sometimes, has even taken the fierceness from the mother on whose breast she rocks now. Grey seas that mourn with her, cradling her as gently as any mother with upset child. Encouraging tears that will not come, trying to ease the numbing emptiness that gnaws at her heart.

She doesn’t know how many days pass sitting on the edge of the deck, half-heartedly fishing for her meals. How many nights blur into one another staring at uncaring stars. Only that gradually, the numbness fades, letting emotion once more trickle in around the edges. Bright flashes of overwhelming fury that someone has stolen her lover – her first, her only, because lover implies equal, and she had no other she’d consider such. Black sorrow deep enough to drown in the tears that it drags unwilling to the surface.

Screams are swallowed by the endless ocean as easily as weeping, until she wears herself thin enough to fall once more into a numbness that has become as comforting as a blanket. As comforting as Kronos’ quickening curling and crackling around the edges of her own, overwhelming and fierce.

More time passes without her knowledge, until she wears her grief thin enough to think of more than drifting with the currents and the winds, and turning away from any land she spots in the distance. When she’s willing to take herself into a port, though it takes long hours to recall where she is, and what ports might be near enough to resupply.

The docks are silent, if not still, when she guides her little boat into a marina long hours after the sun has set. There is no one to take her port-fee, and she doesn’t leave her little boat until dawn breaks, trying to remember who she’d been in that lifetime before this and to decide if she wishes to be that person again. In the end, she digs out a different persona, one she hasn’t used yet – one who wouldn’t have to worry about customs – and pays the fees that allow her to slip onto the streets of the city.

She wanders, a pair of sandles dangling from one hand so if she must put them on, they’re with her. Randomly taking one street or another, not worried about becoming lost and turned around in the web of brick and stone, steel and glass. The solid weight of her sword hidden in a coat long since out of fashion, and the smaller, more compact form of a favored pistol are enough armor for now.

A bar attracts her attention with pink neon, and she pauses to see if it’s open at this mid-morning hour. Not yet, but soon, and she mentally marks it as a place to return later. No amount of drink will drown the grief that still pricks with needle-sharp claws, but neither will it kill her. At least, not unless some fool of an Immortal challenges her, and then, she’s not entirely sure if she would truly give a good accounting of herself or simply let herself be killed.

The sky is fading into dusky blues and purples when she finds her way back to the bar, slipping in to the quiet strains of guitar and a gravel voice. The sort of drink she craves is unlikely to be found here, the reminder of her youth not readily available, but the sharp burn of vodka is good enough. Listening to the musician’s voice weave a spell of sorrow and aching grief that echoes her own heart.

That same gravel voice takes over behind the bar after the set, the musician’s worn hands pour another shot when she puts another crisp bill on the counter. Eyes that remind her of the northern seas watch her for a long moment before he asks her if she wants to talk about it. The offer of a stranger, a mortal who will never quite comprehend the timeframe, but who thinks they might have some knowledge of the depth of grief.

Still, she studies him a moment before she shrugs. If he doesn’t understand, or thinks her crazy, it doesn’t much matter to her. “His name was Kronos,” she says quietly, almost too quietly to be heard over the background. “He was… everything. Wild wolf of the steppe, sharp and fierce as winter winds on a northern sea. The thunder of hooves beneath me; wild, joyous laughter reveling in all we were.”

She looks down at her vodka, not wanting to see the mortal’s expression, but only the memories. “I was a goddess when he found me. Wild daughter of the ocean, merciless and generous, creator and destroyer. He made himself a god in the eyes of my people, brought me to my knees and taught me so much more.” A soft laugh escapes her, the sound more ragged than it has any right to be. Edged with barbs of grief. “My god, my lover. Wind and thunder and flame.”

“And now he’s dead.” The gravel voice is quiet, and draws her attention back to the lined mortal face. Knowledge more than intuition in wary, northern-ocean eyes, though how he could know, she doesn’t understand for a long moment. Not until she darts out one rope-callused hand to grip his, turning the wrist to see the tattoo on the inside.

“You wouldn’t have known him by that name,” she whispers, not letting go, watching him with a fierce anger clawing its way up her throat, choking any effort at speaking louder.

“A friend of mine does.” He doesn’t try to pull away, meets her gaze without nearly as much fear as she expects. No doubt some weapon is hidden under the bar to give him some measure of courage. “We didn’t know you knew him by that name.” The Watchers didn’t know how long she’d known Kronos – she can read that between the lines easily as breathing.

They’re still for a long moment, Watcher and Immortal, silent amongst the chatter of mortals who do not know, nor would care to if they had any inkling of what was really going on. Before she lets go, and settles back onto the stool, before the Watcher relaxes faintly, almost imperceptably.

“Your friend.” She snorts faintly, wondering slightly at the idea that an Immortal would call a mortal friend, much less a Watcher. Hers is only crew, subordinate and protected, but never equal.

Silence once more envelopes her and the Watcher, before she looks up again. “Would this friend of yours challenge me?”

The Watcher shrugs, giving her a wary look. “Don’t think so.”

“Pity.” She drains her shot of vodka, holding it out for another – she hasn’t spent the entire bill she’d handed him earlier, not nearly. She’d welcome his friend, one who she has little doubt is Immortal, right now if he’d be so obliging as to offer her a fight. Win or lose, live or die, none of that matters, only the fight itself, the fierce clash of fire and steel where life sings through her veins.

The night passes in vodka and soft-voiced tales of sea and steppe, horse and ship. Passion, fire-bright and sharp as a winter wind. Grief that breaks that all to razor-edged shards that slice deep into a soul already steeped in blood. Cuts away at the softer parts that have grown only slowly over long centuries, withers emotions that have only just begun to blossom. An anger that burns cold with no direction, and a bone-deep ache for a wild freedom that’s been lost in more ways than one.

She returns to her boat feeling hollowed out, memories flashing across her mind like knife blades, numbness refusing to curl about her in its comforting folds. Sleep refuses to come, and she spends her night staring up at a sky with fewer stars to be seen through the haze of light from the city nearby. Dawn creeps across the sky in brilliant ribbons, and with it comes a slow encroachment of crackling presence, a storm that grumbles long on the sea before it rolls toward ill-prepared shores, vast as the horizon.

A man stands on the dock, hawk-faced and silent. Dark hair cut short, eyes muddied river water older than any ocean. Watching her for a long moment before he raises an eyebrow, and tilts his head toward the shore. “Are you coming, or do we talk with you on your boat and me here?”

Waiting for a long moment, she nods. “A moment.” To remove salt-soaked clothing in favor of something that’s at least been rinsed clear, and wrap her own coat with its hidden cargo about her. Silent as they move along the dock to shore, and into streets waking from the night’s slumber. Tracing a path to the same bar that she’d murmured stories of Kronos to a patient bartender – Watcher, who’d write them down – and ducking inside despite a door locked when they arrive.

There’s a table with the chairs around it rather than on it, tea delicately tinting the air with its aroma, rather than a more welcome bottle of vodka or other strong spirits. She settles, though, and allows a cup to be poured for her. Watching the Immortal who sits across from her as she cradles the cup in her hands, waiting for him to speak and to see from that which way he intended to direct the conversation.

And when he does, there’s a wistfulness to his voice that speaks to a grief that’s perhaps not as jagged edged as her own only because he’s known for longer that the death that tears at her would happen. Had to happen. Sharing a story of Kronos as he was before she ever met him, when he burned bright as wildfire with passion more than rage, chaos and change sweeping across the world. Wildfire instead of wolf, sun-bright summer god rather than savage northern wind.

In return, she tells him her own memories, same as she had the Watcher before. Knowing they’ll not be written down, but remembered as they should be. All the while, wreathed in the perfume of tea for all that she craves something stronger to blunt the still-sharp edges. Tea that becomes something salty and bitter when she sheds silent, unnoticed tears.

“I want to see the wildness of the world again. It grows too small and too tamed to mortal hands.” Her voice is barely a whisper, and her grip on the cup tightens. “But there is no wildness left. Only children with walls and tilled fields in their hearts.”

He’s silent a long moment, the edges of his horizon-storm quickening sparking still against her own still and silent seas. “The world changes, and he couldn’t change with it.”

“He was the wild, untrammeled and beautiful.” She met the gaze of muddy-river eyes, her own lightning-charred black and dead. “As you are the horizon-storm, and I the dying seas. Children burned the wild in quicking-fire, and Mother will take me home before she lets the land-bound have me. What will you do when the world seeks to destroy the horizon-storm too?”

“Survive.” He takes a last sip of his tea, still watching her. Muddy river, horizon-storm, ocean bedrock. Ancient wild long gone and still lurking.

She remains silent for a long moment before setting the bitter brew down, a calm washing over her like the eye of some great hurricane. “Then let the ocean feed horizon-storm, and let me rest. No child should tame the seas, and Mother won’t begrudge you.”

In the end, he refuses to simply kill her, and it takes careful work to corner him and force the choice of survival or falling to her flickering blade on him. She would laugh as steel comes whistling toward her exposed neck, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. Pain lasts but a moment, and then all is dark and quickening-fire before the end.