pennysheets | Faces That Stay the Same for @easilyamused

Faces That Stay the Same for @easilyamused

The last time Jack was in Madrid, back in the late 1870s or so, he'd had to get stitched up by one of the local doctors. It had been a pretty pleasant conversation, and said doctor hadn't even asked too many probing questions about it. Also, he'd been pretty easy on the eyes, so that had been nice.

Now, about a decade later (he thinks, anyway; it could be a little more or a little less), it's not Jack who needs the stitches. The morning after the full moon, weary and heart-sick but determined, he carries the young man the wolf had savaged on his back to where the doctor had been back then, hoping against hope he's still working there. He'll think of something to explain why he doesn't look any different than he did back then. Or maybe he'll be lucky and the doctor won't ask questions, again.

He knocks on the door, shifting the poor fellow a little over his shoulder. He doesn't think he's going to die, he thinks the kid hadn't actually tried to fight the wolf, but... he would much rather be sure. Jack worries. Especially when it's his own fault for not making sure the door on his cellar was secure enough.

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His eyebrows lift slightly at the mention of family - his own kind have no children, not ever, and so family ties are vanishingly rare. Family ties closer than a shared ancestor generations back are unheard of.

Not an anomaly, then, an Immortal whose quickening can't be perceived, and who is blind to others. That should be a relief. Instead, he feels a faint tug of disappointment. If it isn't an anomaly, it also isn't something that can be replicated.

"I don't," he finally says. "Not since my first death."

Now Jack frowns a little, repeating that under his breath. His first death. That rules out some kind of faerie, at least. "You are not a vampire," he hazards. "You're doing your work during the day, with windows open." He wracks his brain for other kinds of immortals that die more than once. "You are not a ghost, clearly. Unless you are the most persistent, solid ghost I have ever met."

Methos laughs, and lifts one long-fingered hand to examine it, as though checking that it hasn't, in the span of their conversation, become translucent. "Nothing so otherworldly as that," he says. "Call me a Promethean, if you'd like. Not entirely accurate, but I do like the rumours that one of my kind inspired Shelley's tale."

More than rumours. He'd been there, after all, for the party and the aftermath, but while he might be reasonably certain now that Javier has no reason to take his head, exposing his backtrail - and possibly exposing Byron along with it - goes against millennia of habit.

You're ascribing more culture to Jack than he maybe has, there, Methos. Jack looks blank, tilting his head. "Shelley?" he repeats. "I don't think I've heard that one."

It's a bad habit of his, developed as literacy has become more common - the printing press is still his favourite invention of the last 500 years. A better habit, perhaps, than assuming everyone who isn't wealthy or a thousand years old is ignorant, though.

"A pity," he says. "It's an interesting story. Frankenstein, if you happen on a copy. It's about a scientist who decided to reanimate a dead man using lightning."

"I will look it up," Jack promises. More on point, though: "So you are reanimated, then. By a scientist or by something else?" He's guessing not a scientist, if the guy expects to find others like him. If a single scientist was doing things like bringing people back from the dead, and leaving them immortal afterwards, surely they would be very singular immortals.

Methos snorts quietly in amusement, and shakes his head. “No, the scientist was pure fiction. Our histories are fragmented - if anyone ever knew just what the force that keeps us going is, they either didn’t write it down, or didn’t leave the answer where anyone could find it.”

It sounds kind of fascinating. Jack knows all sorts of magical beings, but this is the first he's heard of non-vampiric immortals who had to die to become that way.

"How old are you, really?" he asks curiously. "Unless you don't want to tell me. Which would be fine, of course."

“I was born in the early 17th Century,” Methos says, which is off by an order of magnitude, but old habits die very hard.

“Long enough to have seen some things change, and others stay very much the same. What about you?”

"Oh, not so long ago as that. I am only about eighty years old now," Jack admits. "I don't remember the exact year." It hadn't really been important. It still isn't, honestly.

He rubs at his hair again, absently and still futilely trying to get that lock of hair to flatten down again. "And there are more of you? That you can-- can sense? Should I be worried about others wanting to know about me, too?"

“None in the city,” Methos says, rolling one shoulder in an easy shrug. “There might be four of us in the entire country, currently. We’ve never been common. How did you come about your slow aging?”

Four of them. Still more than Jack knows of his own kind. If he even has a kind-- he's still working out if there are that many other werewolves out there.

Speaking of: he sighs a bit. Time to own up to his mistakes. He doubts someone as smart and experienced as this fellow will fail to put the clues together. "Do you know the legends of wolfmen? Lycanthropes?" Werewolf does not translate well to Spanish. Ridiculous, given Spanish is in fact his first language.

"Several variations. Every culture that's ever seen a wolf seems to have one." And there's a common thread between many, if not all. And so because he is experienced and quick on the uptake, he gives Jack a grave look. "Let's get the awkward question out of the way, then - is there anything specific I need to be doing for our young friend?"

He thinks it unlikely - contagious curses make for wonderful stories and morality tales, but if anyone who survived a werewolf attack actually became one, they'd almost certainly be more than mere stories.

"No, no. It is hereditary," Jack says, with a firm shake of his head. "If I ever have children--" Which he emphatically is not going to do, ever. That had been a dream he'd quashed early on. "--they would be as I am. But it can't be passed on through biting or scratching. There would be a lot more of us if it could."

He pauses briefly, then rushes ahead into his earnest yet guilty self-defense: "I had locked myself up before the change happened last night. I am not sure how I got out, if it was my fault or someone else's. But I do try not to hurt people."

Methos huffs a laugh at that, soft and a little wry.

"Evidently," he says. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be here, risking exposure to aid a stranger." He pauses a moment, head canting slightly. "He is a stranger, isn't he? Not a chance acquaintance who might have come calling, and decided to investigate if he heard something unusual?"

Well, true. Not that he could have really expected this to happen, but he would have probably had to explain the lack of aging somehow, even if the doctor hadn't been similarly ageless. It might have been easier to pass off as good health, or slip away before any questions could really be asked, in that case, though.

"I don't even know his name," Jack says, shaking his head apologetically. "Has he woken up? I would be perfectly happy to not have him know I brought him here." Dealing with gratitude on top of the guilt is not comfortable and will probably only make him feel worse.

"Briefly," Methos says. "Enough to take a little food and drink. He wasn't exactly coherent, but that's the opium, I suspect. I'll tell him a watchman brought him in, once he fully wakes."

He smiles, brief and wry, and not entirely unsympathetic. "Less chance of him going looking for his mysterious savior that way."

"Good," Jack sighs. "Good. Having to deal with the thanks of someone who I put in that position to begin with-- it is not comfortable." Which does, of course, mean it's happened before. Both the mauling and the seeking help for the injured afterwards. "I will still pay you for the services, once I collect some coin from where I am staying. It only seems fair, since it was my fault."

"It's just the one night that you're afflicted?" Methos asks, gaze flicking briefly skyward, as though he can track the slow drain of daylight from inside. There's a hint of concern there - he might be immortal, but his staff and neighbours aren't, and Javier seems distressed enough about one night's mishaps without the risk of another, more damaging event.

"Some artifacts can force a change, and there have been two times I changed when I was in a lot of danger and would have died otherwise," Jack says, a little awkwardly, scratching unhappily at one ear. "But normally? Just the one night. I won't change again, unless you are hiding some kind of magical thing in your pocket for transforming werewolves." He uses the English word for werewolves, since hombre-lobo is just so awkward.

Methos shakes his head, though he makes a mental note for himself - another, really, in a conversation full of them. Those artifacts will be something to look up in the Watchers' library, in an identity or two. May be something to look up in some less well-guarded trove before then. If there are relics that could force a change, there might be relics that could suppress it, or keep the man lucid in the shape of the wolf.

"Not unless you have a particular weakness against watches," he says, then pauses. "--I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if silver is a problem, it requires considerably more proximity than this."

If Methos can manage either one, he will become Jack's new favorite person. He's already pretty far up there for being reasonable and helpful, and all. "As far as I know, it has never been a problem. I have worn silver rings before with no trouble. Maybe if someone stabbed me with it." Jack pauses, then adds sheepishly, "I am allergic to cocoa. And grapes. Like a real wolf would be. It is very unfair."

Methos grimaces a little in sympathy. "That is unfortunate. Everyone should be able to have a cup of cocoa or a glass of wine now and then. How about coffee? If that won't make you sick, we can have a cup while we discuss next steps."

"I love coffee," Jack assures him. "And there will be no nasty side-effects." And he's glad he's found half a dozen other kinds of wine that he likes, given the amount of wine people in this country drink. So what if he comes across as a bit of a wine snob? Most of the people who think that won't ever see him again, anyway.

Still: "How many next steps do we need to discuss?" he asks, a bit nervously. His plan had been pretty clear: run off home, bring back money for the doctor, and then promptly disappear.

"You said you didn't know how you got loose last night," Methos replies, hitching one shoulder in a little shrug. "We should work that out, at the very least. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out if your locks were tampered with."

At least, not for someone who's tampered with as many locks as he has over the long centuries.

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