Fanfic: Memoriam [Highlander / Teen Wolf]
Oct. 22nd, 2012 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsTitle: Memoriam
Characters: Jackson Whittemore, Duncan MacLeod
Word Count: 760
Rating: PG
Content Notes: Inspired by this picture by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bdrixhaettc, and for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
angst_bingo prompt: wild card: grief. This is a future fic that involves a major character death. Story is not part of my existing Immortal!Jackson series (though there's really no reason it couldn't be).
Summary: Jackson says good-bye.
MacLeod knew that there was no such thing as an easy goodbye. He knew that, despite its inevitability, death always came as a surprise. He knew that that surviving grief had no recipe and didn’t—so very much didn’t—get easier with practice.
In the fifty years since taking Jackson Whittemore as his student, MacLeod had taught him every sword stroke, parry, and defense that he knew. They had visited museums across the globe and studied languages and cultures, applying history to make it easier to navigate the future. Together they learned to negotiate a world that recorded, parsed, and saved every bit of information that tumbled through its greedy systems.
Jackson mastered the skills offered with the dedication of one who knows that second place is only a polite term for loser. And he treated Immortality like a carte blanche to misbehave, taking every risk he could imagine. “It’s not like it’ll kill me,” he scoffed, each time Mac tried to rein him in, to remind him of the need to stay off the radar and out of the public eye.
They fought often, one or the other of them storming away from the clash of personalities—each convinced, always convinced, that what was obvious to him was also right and the singular option. They each nursed grudges of the other’s stubbornness and refusal to see the world as it was. Sometimes they went years without speaking.
None of that mattered when MacLeod got the news.
Jackson greeted him at the cemetery with a loose hug, as if no strong words had ever come between them, then turned back toward the new grave. His arms dangling uselessly at his sides and his head hung with the weight of grief. Despite the heat of the day, he wore his long, leather jacket, just as Mac did. His sword would be enclosed in the lining as was necessary for their kind. No one else was around, nor would be. That was one risk Jackson wouldn’t take.
Mac joined him at the graveside and bowed his head in respect. He had never met the person who lay beneath their feet, though he had heard enough stories to imagine otherwise. The two Immortals stood together in silence broken only with the distant sounds of traffic and the clanging of the rope against the nearby flagpole. The earth smelled moist and the air like rain was on its way.
“Tell me about her,” Mac suggested. He clasped his hands in front of himself and peered across the tended lawn and the rows of gravestones, carefully not making eye contact.
“What difference will it make?” Jackson demanded. “It won’t bring her back to life.” The hurt in his voice was strong, as was the helplessness. Here he was, standing at the graveside of a woman he had loved and lost a lifetime ago—a woman who had yet died young by the standards of her era—with his always-seventeen-year-old-face and his sword as potent reminders of the negatives of living forever.
Mac sighed and pondered how to best convey what little wisdom he had learned on the topic. “We are remembered by those we leave behind,” he said, at length, thinking in turn of Anne and Tessa and Little Deer: thinking of all the people whose only lasting mark on the world had been on him, and how much he owed their memories for that privilege.
Jackson scoffed and shuffled his feet like he was still the recalcitrant teenager his face claimed he was. But he didn’t argue. In a nearby tree, a bird let out a long streak of song before flying off. “I loved her,” Jackson said, and Mac nodded softly, because he had expected no other answer. “I loved her in all the wrong ways before I figured out how to love her in the right way.” Jackson bit his lip, his eyes taking in the information etched on the stone, scant words that outlined a life he’d assumed he’d be part of, until he died first, until he came back. “Then I left her.”
“I’m sure she thought of you often,” Mac said.
Jackson went quiet, his breath coming heavier with tears he wasn’t yet able to share. Mac blinked back some of his own. The day was growing warmer and the weight of his jacket heavier, but Mac knew that grief couldn’t be rushed. Before Jackson could talk, his memories needed time to set. And then…then a small part of a mortal life would get to live on forever.
Characters: Jackson Whittemore, Duncan MacLeod
Word Count: 760
Rating: PG
Content Notes: Inspired by this picture by
bdrixhaettc, and for angst_bingo prompt: wild card: grief. This is a future fic that involves a major character death. Story is not part of my existing Immortal!Jackson series (though there's really no reason it couldn't be).Summary: Jackson says good-bye.
MacLeod knew that there was no such thing as an easy goodbye. He knew that, despite its inevitability, death always came as a surprise. He knew that that surviving grief had no recipe and didn’t—so very much didn’t—get easier with practice.
In the fifty years since taking Jackson Whittemore as his student, MacLeod had taught him every sword stroke, parry, and defense that he knew. They had visited museums across the globe and studied languages and cultures, applying history to make it easier to navigate the future. Together they learned to negotiate a world that recorded, parsed, and saved every bit of information that tumbled through its greedy systems.
Jackson mastered the skills offered with the dedication of one who knows that second place is only a polite term for loser. And he treated Immortality like a carte blanche to misbehave, taking every risk he could imagine. “It’s not like it’ll kill me,” he scoffed, each time Mac tried to rein him in, to remind him of the need to stay off the radar and out of the public eye.
They fought often, one or the other of them storming away from the clash of personalities—each convinced, always convinced, that what was obvious to him was also right and the singular option. They each nursed grudges of the other’s stubbornness and refusal to see the world as it was. Sometimes they went years without speaking.
None of that mattered when MacLeod got the news.
Jackson greeted him at the cemetery with a loose hug, as if no strong words had ever come between them, then turned back toward the new grave. His arms dangling uselessly at his sides and his head hung with the weight of grief. Despite the heat of the day, he wore his long, leather jacket, just as Mac did. His sword would be enclosed in the lining as was necessary for their kind. No one else was around, nor would be. That was one risk Jackson wouldn’t take.
Mac joined him at the graveside and bowed his head in respect. He had never met the person who lay beneath their feet, though he had heard enough stories to imagine otherwise. The two Immortals stood together in silence broken only with the distant sounds of traffic and the clanging of the rope against the nearby flagpole. The earth smelled moist and the air like rain was on its way.
“Tell me about her,” Mac suggested. He clasped his hands in front of himself and peered across the tended lawn and the rows of gravestones, carefully not making eye contact.
“What difference will it make?” Jackson demanded. “It won’t bring her back to life.” The hurt in his voice was strong, as was the helplessness. Here he was, standing at the graveside of a woman he had loved and lost a lifetime ago—a woman who had yet died young by the standards of her era—with his always-seventeen-year-old-face and his sword as potent reminders of the negatives of living forever.
Mac sighed and pondered how to best convey what little wisdom he had learned on the topic. “We are remembered by those we leave behind,” he said, at length, thinking in turn of Anne and Tessa and Little Deer: thinking of all the people whose only lasting mark on the world had been on him, and how much he owed their memories for that privilege.
Jackson scoffed and shuffled his feet like he was still the recalcitrant teenager his face claimed he was. But he didn’t argue. In a nearby tree, a bird let out a long streak of song before flying off. “I loved her,” Jackson said, and Mac nodded softly, because he had expected no other answer. “I loved her in all the wrong ways before I figured out how to love her in the right way.” Jackson bit his lip, his eyes taking in the information etched on the stone, scant words that outlined a life he’d assumed he’d be part of, until he died first, until he came back. “Then I left her.”
“I’m sure she thought of you often,” Mac said.
Jackson went quiet, his breath coming heavier with tears he wasn’t yet able to share. Mac blinked back some of his own. The day was growing warmer and the weight of his jacket heavier, but Mac knew that grief couldn’t be rushed. Before Jackson could talk, his memories needed time to set. And then…then a small part of a mortal life would get to live on forever.
