Prompt #7 - What is your greatest loss? After five thousand of years of living, what lost haven’t I experienced? I’ve lost my mortality, but gained immortality. Some might argue I’ve lost my humanity and I would agree that I did at one point, but I prefer to think I have gained some it back.
Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had numerous lovers. I’ve married sixty-eight of them. Each time I fall in love, I fall hard. Each loss seems to hurt worse than the last one. I’ve made vows to never love again, but I always do eventually.
Some of my lovers have had children when I met them, some were pregnant, and some cheated on me, so that they could have them. It didn’t matter how the child came about, I loved them as if they were my own. A rare few I was present at the birth, was their father through their childhood, advised through their adulthood, and mourned as they slipped away in their old age. I watched them live full lives. So many died before their time, disease, war, and some were killed by immortals hunting me. The worst of those losses were always the infants they never had a chance.
I’ve trained other immortals as students. Students have to be taught about their immortality. The majority of new immortals wake up and have no idea what they are. Older immortals take them on students and teach them. I don’t know of a student of mine that is still alive. I’ve lost them to other immortals, some were killed by enemies and some were even killed by those I call friends. A few students made the mistake to try for my head.
I’ve lost immortals that for a thousand years I called Brother. They were immortals that if I ever needed someone to be killed, they would be happy to handle it. They were bloodthirsty group, reveled in the hunt and enjoyed a good quickening. They were willing to poison the world, so that they could rule. They had to be stopped, I knew it then and I still know it, but a thousand years of friendship is a lot turn down, even if its been over two thousand years since you saw them. I still feel their loss, but I also feel a bit safer knowing Kronos won’t be coming after my head.
None of these do I consider my greatest lost. I’ve gotten used to losing people, it’s a fact of my life. I lose lovers and friends, some to old age more often to something else. Some have simply ended our friendship and others have died. So long as I can remember them, then I have something to hold onto. I’ve lost some of my memories. I don’t remember the times when I was mortal. Everything before my first head is fuzzy. I worry that the longer I live the more memories I will lose.
However, even if I do lose memories then I have my journals. I've kept since I have learned how to write. I put down a number of things, some important and some mundane. If I lose some memory then they are all there in those journals. The people I knew, my lovers, my children, my friends, are all in there. So long as I have my journals, I will never completely forget about them.
There was a fire a few centuries ago where I kept my journal. I lost some of my earliest journals and I do not remember what I kept in those journals, so I have lost memories. Memories of the people I knew then and those are my greatest lost. The lost of my journals are my greatest lost of them all.
Character: Methos Fandom: Highlander Word Count: 622 Crossposted to here