Intermission: Findings


Cardinal Giovanni: "I thought God wouldn't let this happen to a true Christian."

Methos: "You know, Giovanni, I saw Christ teach, I saw Christ heal, you, you self-centred son of a bitch, are NO Christian!"

(Highlander: The Source)


Austria, Tyrol – The former Province Noricum - Present


Remembrances! Images! Memories!

It was time to take leave of the days gone by, of the days filled with passion, power and bloodshed, of the days filled with sweet but long-lost love and of the days where I had to decide whether I'd give up one life for another or whether I'd continue walking on a beaten path.

I often wondered who I'd be today, if I'd have made different decisions back in the days of the Bronze Age. Certainly not the one I am, today, and, certainly a way different kind of character.

What also often made me wonder was what would have happened to the Four Horsemen - the men and the myth - if I'd not have left Kronos, Silas and Caspian.

It had never been a secret that the tension between Kronos and me got mirrored in the tension between Silas and Caspian. As long as the four of us pulled on one string, no one had been able to withstand us, but as soon as our different personalities reached their surfaces with their different aims, needs and wants, it got obvious that, even though we held out together for more than a millennium, there would have come the day where each of us would have been forced to choose a side.

I don't think, I'd ever have been able to successfully challenge Kronos. Not back in the Bronze Age and not today. Without MacLeod, Kronos would either have killed me or he'd have kicked me back into a life full of violence and greed for power.

Looking back at it this way, I can't say I'm unhappy that it's finally over and it would possibly be better to simply move on. Wasting too many thoughts on all the ifs, the buts and the be-likes would make the one who'd do so bitter and eaten away by his or her own thoughts, one day. Of what sense would it be to still dwell upon feelings like guilt or hate forever? Now, with the Horsemen gone and only a dwindling number of us born in the days of old left...

If there is one lesson I've learned over the centuries, it would be that nothing lasts forever – except of all those relics lots of eager archaeologists all around the world are excavating on every continent, nowadays, regardless of possibly causing damage or benefit to the place or its former purpose.

Nothing lasts forever – except of all those graves, the same eager archaeologists are searching for feverishly until they finally discover them, hell-bent to open and plunder them in a way not even the tomb raiders of the ancient days would have done or even wanted it.

More and more often, they do not even spare the dead from getting displayed in semi-historical exhibitions – their mortal remains torn out of their graves, betrayed of their eternal peace, robbed of their belongings and finally exposed to the irreverent stares of flabbergasted visitors. As if there is any difference between defiling a grave of ancient times or a grave of ours. It's the same, but no one cares as long as the cover of scientific and historical significance gets spread over it.

I have to admit, I use to visit exhibitions and museums as well, but out of a totally different impulse:

Whenever I go to have a look at all those relics having been nothing different back in ancient times but the same junk we keep in our houses and flats today, I ask myself, if some pieces of that stuff might have belonged to me once and, if not, to whom instead.

Somebody, I might have known?


Be it as it may, it seems, I made the right decisions.

The Bronze Age, the Four Horsemen – I finally left it all behind.

The same applies to Kronos, Silas and Caspian – they are gone for good...

Only Cassandra and I are left, having outlived centuries and even Kronos' newest try to destroy the world and us. She still hates me or talks herself into believing so and I'm aware of the fact that she might possibly make another try to take my head should we ever cross paths again.

Perhaps I'm wrong and she won't, but I'd not place a bet on it...

Cassandra!

I never thought of seeing her again and I know now, she would never have believed me if I'd have told her, but I had always been relieved to know she escaped successfully. Sadly, I never got the chance to tell her, and up till today I'm still not sure, why Cassandra really hates me. Was it because she hated herself for having believed in loving me, the one who took her by force, or was it because I betrayed her - not only by leaving her to Kronos, but also by never having told her what she might possibly have wished to hear from me: that I loved her?

And had Esther been right?

Did I love Cassandra?


With a sigh, I decided that it was time to leave.

It was rather unlikely that one of the archaeologists would stray up here to this picturesque place high above the town and the excavations, but I wasn't eager for answering questions like why and wherefore I found myself up here - without permission.

In addition, there was a good chance that these estates – the meadows, the forest and the source having once been the property of a rich Roman satirist - belonged to different owner by now and I was definitely not interested in making the acquaintance of an enraged farmer being hell-bent of chasing me off of his freehold.

I enjoyed one last view over the widespread deep circular valley and for a split second both pictures melted – the one I saw in front of me and the one I kept as a welcomed and much loved memory.

I smirked.

All those overeager scientists and archaeologists would never come to know, how beautiful and how wide this place and the city really had been, once. Streets, tracks and settlements prevented the ruins from ever getting excavated in total and even if it might have been possible, they would always remain ruins, unable to match those wonderful memories of a man, who once strolled though its lanes and who knew how beautiful this place had been long before the town and the pretty villages had been built nestling up against the hillsides today.

The silent purl of the nearby spring made me forget about my planned departure and while I knelt down by its side letting its fresh water run over my hands, I was hardly willing to believe my eyes. Beside me, midst the moistened soil, lay a little trinket having obviously resisted any try of digging it out.

Maybe, because it was easy to overlook, maybe, because of its size, or, maybe, because no one would think about finding anything like this up here. It was a cameo, a little piece of jewellery like many Romans used to loved it, and the same it was something, I myself would never have expected to find it up here as well. I cleaned it carefully from dirt and mud and stopped short. No, I did not err! I knew this cameo and I'd never have believed in ever seeing it again for centuries...

And so it happened, that I found myself getting tossed back in time again. To a time and a place, a lot of people dream of:

The Roman Empire at its peak!

I smiled again while I carefully spun the little trinket in my fingers.

Oh yes, I knew it! I even kept it for ages, but it never belonged to me...

Actually, there had been not much at all I had been allowed to name my property, while I lived within one of the most powerful and most impressive empires of all ages, which was possibly owed to the fact, that I myself was the property of others at that time.

Centuries did pass by since I had decided to turn my back on the Horsemen and with them on bloodshed and killing. Centuries, I had used to get behind the secrets and the wonders of the world, included the secret of what it was that kept me alive.

I travelled Tibet, China and Britannia.

I witnessed the fall of Troy and helped to free my beloved country of Egypt from the Hyksos and their cruel kings.

I learned and studied with philosophers and architects, with poets and astronomers, with mathematicians and priests.

And I witnessed Rome rise and grow.

The city amongst the seven hills. The village, meant to rule the biggest part of the known world for more than a thousand years, meant to guide the fortunes of the empire through its legions, its efficiency and its law. The legendary spot of land which still inspires historians, film-makers and writers as well as all the believers going on their pilgrimage to the Eternal City. Without knowing anything about HIM, whom they praise, and his having been so different from everything his followers want to represent today.

I had been there, I heard him preach and hung on his lips like so many others, and I saw him die – shortly before I finally came to see Eternal Rome.

As a slave...

As the slave of a man, who often forgot about me being his slave.

As the slave of a man, who could have become the leader of the unequalled Roman Empire.

I came to Rome as the slave of senator Valerius Petronius and as it turned out he had not been the worst master fate had chosen for me since I owned a lot of latitude and, way more valuable, his unconfined trust.

Up to the day when the inevitable happened: Drusilla!