Title: Demons We Share
Author: Jinni (druscilla@cox.net)
Rating: PG13
Pairing: W/Methos
Genre: BtVS/Highlander Crossover
Disclaimer: All things BtVS belong to Joss Whedon. All things Highlander belong to its respective copyright holder(s).
Distribution: WLF, WLS, BMP, NHA, Aislin, any others that are currently archiving my fics that I may have forgotten.
Author’s Note: Pairing #56 at The Quickie Challenge: http://quickie.moonlitpaths.com .

~*~

She saw him the moment she walked into the seedy little bar she had begun to frequent at the edge of Sunnydale.

He was sitting there, nursing the bottle of beer in his hand; just staring down at the counter as though he had lost his best friend.

She knew that look.

It was the same one that she carried on her own face.

The look of someone that had been through Hell and hadn’t come through unscathed. Not even half a year had passed since her foray into the Dark Arts had nearly destroyed the Earth, and she still carried the burdens of that sin with her, festering in her heart like a sore she could never quite heal.

And so she did what she would want anyone else to do. She sat as far away from him as possible, allowing him the solitude he had evidently come here to seek.

She sat down, motioning to the bartender. Her ID was out and ready when he asked; and within only a few minutes she had her drink. Rum and coke, heavy on the rum. Just the way she liked it. The first sip was strong enough to make her wince, but every sip thereafter was a godsend, dulling her senses until she felt just about human again; not a monster like she knew, in her heart, that she was.

Somewhere in the back of the bar a jukebox was playing something whiny and depressing. She snorted. Who was she to call a song ‘depressing’ when she herself was depressed? Of course, according to her friends she was also depressing, making her feel that much smaller and more insecure about her future place in this town. Her friends didn’t want her around anymore. It was clear in their eyes and the fact that they avoided her every chance they got.

"They don’t even worry that I’ll do it again." She mumbled unhappily, throwing back the last of the drink.

"Do what again?"

She stiffened, turning slowly to face the owner of the very lovely Britshy accented voice that was next to her.

It was him!

The brooding man she had seen when she walked in.

"N-Nothing." She stammered, blushing over someone catching her in such a private moment, even if she had made the mistake of speaking it aloud for the world to hear.

He smiled lightly, nodding; and she got the feeling he understood.

"And so They don’t worry that you’ll do this Nothing again?" He joked, half-serious. "And this is whats upsetting you?"

Willow shrugged.

"That and the ‘Nothing’ that I did or didn’t do." She frowned. Why was he sitting here, invading her solitude, when she had gone out of her way to leave him with his?

"You seemed like you could use someone to talk to." His quiet voice answered that unasked question that had only just been flitting through her overly analytical brain.

"I do." She admitted. "But there’s not much of whats bothering me that I can talk about. So its pointless."

"You can talk to me about anything. I won’t tell a soul." His eyes were clear and completely serious. There was something lurking within them, though. The same type of thing she always saw when she looked at Angel or Spike, except on a much larger scale.

She saw age.

This man wasn’t what he appeared to be.

Lowering her shields just enough to ‘feel’ him, she gasped, unable to stop her reaction. Not only was he old – he was *very* old, as in millennia worth of old. He wasn’t human, though what he was she wasn’t sure. Very different from herself, but that was to be expected – it wasn’t as if she was very much the normal human, either.

"Something wrong?" He was asking, his hand resting lightly on her arm. Still those eyes that looked like warm chocolate, boring into her brain. With her shields down she could feel him, buzzing around the corner of her mind, like this presence that was awe inspiring and scary all at the same time.

She licked her lips, telling her brain to just shake her head and move on. To get up, thank him for his concern, and leave the bar. To get far away from this thing that she didn’t understand and was, quite honestly, scared of. Anything with that much time under its belt would be sure to have more power than her.

And so she opened her mouth, but ended up surprising not just him, but herself as well.

"What are you?" Her voice was a breathy whisper, once she could barely hear above the pounding of her heart. She hadn’t meant to say anything, and cursing herself internally she found that she was continuing on. "You feel so old in my head."

The man looked, to say the least, shocked. He sat back a little further from her, those warm eyes closing down just a little, narrowing in contemplation.

"I could ask the same thing of you." He responded after a few long minutes of contemplation. "Most people can’t ‘feel me’ in their heads."

She nodded.

"Fair enough." A soft, bitter laugh. "I’m a witch. A pretty powerful one at that, so if you’re some sort of evil demon then you should just leave." She hoped her threat sounded better out loud than it did in her head. "My name is Willow."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I’ve been called a demon." He joked, lamely. "But I most definitely am not. And I am certainly not evil."

Willow was so lost and confused over the enigma of a man sitting before her that she barely heard his next words.

"Not as of right now, anyway."

She laughed.

"You sound like me. ‘Not evil right now – check back later’." She motioned for another drink from the bartender. "Though – I doubt you’ve done anything quite as bad as I have." She added as an afterthought.

"I wouldn’t count on it." He answered her, dead serious. He held his hand out to her. "My name is Adam."

She doubted that. There was something in the way he said the name, as if it was just something on a piece of paper and not really a part of him. That told her volumes. Whatever his real name was, he didn’t want her to know it. And that was fine by her.

"It’s a pleasure to meet you." She acknowledged with a gentle shake of his hand.

"Tell me – " She began after taking a sip of her new drink. "Have you ever tried to end the world? Destroy all life upon it?"

Adam blinked, once again brought up short by this tiny looking young woman.

"No. I’ve done some awful things, but that wasn’t one of them."

"Ah." She sighed sadly. "I was right, then. You haven’t done anything as bad as I have."

"You - - tried to end the world?"

Willow nodded, sparing him another sad smile.

"Yup. Would have done it, too, if a friend hadn’t been there to pull me back from that ledge. Though – he’s not around much now. He stopped caring after that. Save the world but don’t save Willow. She doesn’t deserve the saving."

There were tears in her eyes, glistening like great crystal drops against the background of her emerald orbs. He felt chilled by what she had told him, yet oddly saddened by her sorrow. Whatever she had done, she was sorry for it. That much was clear.

And so. . . to get her mind off of her troubles –

"You asked what I was – still want to know? Its pretty unbelievable."

"As unbelievable as a witch trying to bring about the apocalypse?" She tried to joke, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand.

"Perhaps not quite so unbelievable, then." He backtracked with a grin. "I’m an Immortal."

"Immortal? As in – cannot die?" Her curiosity piqued, Willow found dwelling on her sadness not quite as important.

"Well – sort of."

And so he explained the Game to her, answering her questions and finding himself rewarded by the way her eyes lit up with curiosity. It was all worth it, this bearing of secrets, to see her smile; to know he eased her pain. He told her about himself, too, giving away his real name as though she had been his confidant for many hundreds of years.

And she told him more of herself, of the deeds that had drawn her to try to end the world; of the love she still bore for her dead lover, and of her fear that the fading remnants of that loss meant she hadn’t loved Tara quite as much as she should have.

"Take it from me." He smiled gently. "You live. You love. And when that love is over, the pain will fade. I’ve had many loves die over the course of my life. . . Many."

"I would imagine so." Willow nodded thoughtfully, feeling remarkably sober despite the three drinks she had consumed during the hours they had sat there. "That must get lonely. The living forever part. . . Watching all you love die. . ."

Adam, now Methos to her, nodded.

"It does. But every now and then you find someone worth risking the pain and loneliness with. And, for that brief span of time, you know what it means to truly live again."

His hand was resting on top of hers, and the relevancy of his words was not lost on Willow. They had connected. It was a wonderful thing. She could share her guilts with him without fear of remonstration, and he could do likewise. She gave him a brave smile.

"I can’t promise you anything, you know. Understanding I can give, though. Is that enough."

He tilted his head to the side, nodding ever so slightly; and his eyes closed for a moment, absorbing the idea that there was someone else in the world that knew what it was like to carry the sins of an eternity on their shoulders.

And that gave him the courage to carry on, to not let himself fall into a state of complacence that could end up with the loss of his head. She was beautiful of mind and spirit, though her soul felt the taint of darkness. If she could still be this creature of light and loveliness, couldn’t he be the same?

Damnation wasn’t looking like such an inevitable possibility anymore.

"That’ll be enough." He smiled at her, raising the back of her hand to his lips to graze a kiss across the knuckles. She smiled, pulling a slip of paper from her purse and scribbling something on it. Her number.

He’d call her, she knew he would.

They had demons in common, waiting to be expelled.

~*~The End~*~