DISCLAIMER: Methos doesn't belong to me, but rather Daivs/Panzer, Rysher, and Gaumont.
WARNING: This doesn't contain sex, violence, foul language, or any of that other good stuff. Just me being, ugh, psuedo-intellectual. Many thanks to Bria for Shakespeare's "Sonnet CLXVII", and to those who patiently listened to me wail about my drunken, lazy muse. Feedback is welcome, at canadian_girl_eh_13@yahoo.com, especially since I have no idea what I'm doing....
The Warrior or the Scholar
It was barely mid-morning and already the sun was mercilessly beating down on the Athenian marketplace. Nobleman and slave alike wiped the beade sweat from their brwo, while elbowing through the suging crowd. The shouts of the merchants rang out over their heads, promising every kind of good that was to be had in Greece. A fish merchant shoved some of his whares under the nose of a passerby.
"Look, caught fresh this morning!" he crowed "You could not get better from Poseidon himself!" The offer was met with a deadly glare from cold gray eyes. The offended stranger was dressed in the loose pants and high boots of and outlander; his hair was too long to be the stylle prefered by the Athenian men. The merchant scurried back nervously as the foriegner twitched a hand towards the sowrd sheated at his side.
"Methos," an older man, dressed in rumpled scholar's robes, placed a calming hand on his arm "what was it that you came here to discuss with me?"He steered him away from the stalss where the goods were being haggled over. Methos shot the vendor a last dark scowl, and turned his attention to his companion.
"What makes you think i came here to discuss something?" he said "Perhaps I merely came to see an old friend. It's been...seven years?"
"Ten, and you're welcome here anytime." was the reply "but any fool can see that something weighs heavily on your mind."
"Any fool indeed!" Methos snorted "Socrates, sometimes I think it would be easier to be friends with a simpleton than Athen's greatest thinker."
"Bah, I know knothing!" Socrates replied "I am only wiser than most because I know that I know nothing!" He chuckled and settled himself on a stone bench. Methos sat beside him, a wry grin lighting his face for a moment. He sighed then, and impatiently shoved a hand through his hair.
"Ah, my thought and my discourses as mad men's are!" he said "How...do you think...is it possible for a man to completely change his nature? To become utterly opposite from what he was to begin with?" The philosopher pondered this for a moment, rubbing his beaded chin in silent contemplation.
"Is it not the way of all change to be completely opposite in it's nature?" He plucked a flower that had sprung up between the stones of the square. "Did not this flower change from a tiny seed, just as all large things come from something small? Are not large and small complete opposities?"
"I don't see how you can compare human nature and a plant!" Methos protested.
"But is not the seed changed by it's environment/ just as man is shaped by his own, by the obstacles he meets, the people around him?" He rose to his feet. "And as man is shaped thusly, he changes roles in life. The son becomes the father, the student becomes the teacher..." he arched an eyebrow at Methos "...perhaps even the warrior becomes a scholar?"
Methos shook his head in disbelief; Socrates dismissed the gesture with a wave of his hand. "I am not that much of a fool that I have not noticed. You carry yourself like a general. You could have dispatched of that fish monger with a flick of your sword had you so desired." He poked his companion in the chest "But here beats the heart of a scholar, always questioning, learning, watching." He chuckled "Do you remeber the first time that we met? What you asked me?"
Methos grinned "I wanted to know whay you put up with the constantpersecution from the government, whay a man said to be the greatest mind in all of Athens could not come up with a plan to be rid of a few bothersome bureacrats." he laughed "I still want to know!"
"Ha! See ,from that first meeting you shoed me the keen mind of a scholar! Yet you don't see yourself that way, do you? Which one shall you choose, the warrior or the scholar? Perhaps they are not as opposite as you think." he twirled the bloom that he had plucked in his fingers "Just that one is borne from the roots of the other."
Methos smiled own on the old man, and clasped his shoulders in a loose embrace. "Thank you." he said simply, the nstarted to move off into the crowd.
"And maybe when you're old and feevle like me, you'll come back to Athens and philosophise on your metamorphisis, eh?" he called after Methos, who vanished into the crush. The philosopher sighed, and whispered to himself. "Be at peace my boy, for I ahve sworn the fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night." Soon too, he was lost in the throng, his blessing whisked away on the wind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CXLVII
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill
The uncertain sickly appetite please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve.
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reasom past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourses as mad men's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
~William Shakespeare~