Author note: The Lesson will be much more easily understood if you read The Teacher first. There are no spoilers in this piece for past or future stories.

Story note: This takes place about twelve hours after "The Teacher" closes.

Canon note: Still between "The Messenger" and "Valkyrie."

The Lesson

*Invictus

William Ernest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Methos didn't hear from Amy for the rest of the night, nor in the morning, so went to her small apartment and knocked on the door. She called out no welcome, but didn't threaten either, and finding the knob turned easily, Methos let himself in. Amy stood at the windows across the small room, ramrod straight, and still as a statue, her unfocused eyes stared through the glass and she didn't acknowledge his entry. Methos wondered if she'd stood in the same position all night. It was easily to believe, since she still wore her armor body suit and shorts she had walked away in the evening before.

He dropped a bag to the floor with a rattling, clanking, thud and draped himself across the couch, hiking boots propped up on one arm. "Brought your gear back. Mike's left town." Methos stretched and put his hands behind his head. He thought he understood why Amy was so angry with her teacher and he agreed with Mike. But then, the oldest Immortals would, while the young ones would be more likely to see things Amy's way.

"I know." The quiet words were clipped and short.

"You psychically linked to him, too?"

"No." Without looking Amy pointed at the tv behind her. On the screen, a local station showed footage as a plane left the ground at the airport while the anchors ran through the expected itinerary at the next stop in Japan.

"You left me to drive another Immortal to his hotel. Pretty trusting of you."

"He wouldn't hurt you."

Methos stared at her back, dumbfounded and unsure if he should be pleased or indignant that she automatically trusted him to not go after Mike. "He's over three thousand years old." Methos flung himself upright and slammed his feet to the floor. He hammered his words at her ears. "That makes him one of the few ancients! You can't know what someone that old is really like."

"Yes, I can. He hasn't changed."

"Everyone changes!"

"He's my champion." She stated it simply and quietly, still not turning around, still not moving.

Methos managed to get a strangled noise out of his throat as he stomped to her side and jabbed a finger under her nose. "You and MacLeod! Your damn codes of honor will get you killed!"

"No, dammit!" Amy swatted his hand away and glared at Methos with lips tightly pinched. "Not in the song of yore, Sir Gallahad kind of way. He is The Champion, in a more ancient, tribal, and even brutal way than anyone alive today could imagine. He serves my parents and, eventually, he will serve me in the same way. Certainly taught me a lesson in humility last night, didn't he?"

"I don't follow."

"Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.* I'd become so proud of myself, so sure I couldn't be made to hurt someone unless I wanted to. There's no one stronger than my will." She snorted and sneered at herself. "Well, I was a little wrong, wasn't I?"

"I still don't…"

"I told you about the work I used to do; courier to assassin. I loved my job, I worked hard at it, and training was intense. Brutal. I didn't care. There were these tests, I always thought I was passing with flying colors, but truth was I was failing miserably. Well, failing by their standards." Amy started and restarted the next part of her story several times. Frustrated with her inability to succinctly describe a training session, she gave up and tried a different direction. Flopping into the arm chair, she pulled her hair out of her face and began a final time. "The point of these exercises, I thought, was to improve accuracy and reaction time so that I would have less of a chance of creating a friendly-fire incident."

Methos leaned against the wall. "You were wrong?"

"The point was to desensitize me to the idea of killing my teammates. My friends. I was supposed to take them out, but I never did. When it became obvious the drills weren't working, they changed their training methods. Instead of trying to take me to their goal one step at a time they moved on to techniques like sleep deprivation and aversion therapy - that was my favorite," she added with a sneer.

"And their 'training' never worked on you."

"In the fell clutch of circumstance my head is bloody, but unbowed.*" She lifted her chin and looked down her nose. "Not once did I so much as give a scratch to a target that I considered a friend. I held tightly to that. It became… There was nothing more important to me."

"Until yesterday." Full understanding was dawning on Methos. Amy didn't realize the point her sensei had tried to make. The fact that she had killed someone she cared about had shaken her so deeply, she couldn't get past it. She was angry at herself for losing control, and she was still lashing out at Mike for making it happen.

"My core. The one thing I had kept from changing. It's broken and I am gone. Now who am I?" If it had been possible, Amy would have sunk further into the chair.

"We change, we adapt, or we die. It's that simple."

"You think MacLeod and I are going to die young? Because he hasn't changed? Because I don't want to? Doesn't one need a set of principles to hold to, to remain one's self?"

"Death before dishonor?"

She snorted and her eyebrows drew down as she stared past Methos. "I was being raised with a code of honor, and I thought I was still following it, even as I started down that dark path. I thought I was still following that code as I did things that I knew were wrong because the result was mostly good. I thought it made what I did right, somehow."

"And now? Will you cling so tightly to your code and your control even if it means you die rather than break it? Mike was right and you have missed his point! The person at your side, at your back may be more dangerous than the enemy at your front and you have to kill them if that's what it takes for you to live. Can you learn to go as far as you must without losing control?"

Amy peeled herself out of the arm chair and walked back to the window before whispering at the glass, "I can't make that decision and remain who I am."

Methos grabbed her shoulders and spun her back around with a small shake. "You won't remain you, because you'll be dead!"

Amy ignored him, seemingly speaking to herself. "How different might I have been if..."

"If?" Methos released her arms as Amy pulled away. They both leaned against the wall, on opposite sides of the window.

"I've been remembering everything. Every lesson, every conversation, and I'm realizing how much he and his immortality have directly influenced my entire life."

"Would you change any of that?"

"He is the reason I had Darius as a pen pal. He is the reason I met MacLeod."

"Would you change it?"

Amy pushed off the wall, turned back to the window, and stared at the line of clouds moving in. Her back once again rod straight and her hands - which normally flitted through the air as she spoke - hugged her elbows tightly. The silence between them thickened as she re-evaluated the relationships in her life - especially those with Immortals - for the fifteenth time in twelve hours. Methos remained silent, watching the shifting colors in her eyes. At last, her shoulders sagged and her chin lowered by a fraction of an inch. Her eyes didn't leave the clouds outside. "No, I wouldn't change it."

"Then why are you so angry with him?"

"My entire life has always had a sense of being pre-planned. My entire future, mapped out and planned down to the minute without my consent, without asking what I might want. All I want is for my life to be my own. My choice. Not because I am expected to, because I want to. Even as a child, that's all -" Her voice broke and she took a moment to recover. "Juilliard was taken from me and soon after I chose to leave home. It wasn't home, it was a pit of vipers I couldn't take anymore. I left my sensei and my parents, thinking I was making my own choice. I went back to my courier job because I enjoyed it. And then I was bumped down a new path. Bumped and nudged, but I took that path willingly, thinking it was my own choice. And I became a death-bringer." Amy hugged herself tightly and her voice slid into a lower register. To Methos it seemed she was sneering at herself as she continued, "I was good at it, I enjoyed it, I wanted it. There I was, up to my eyebrows in blood and out of control. That is where my choices took me. Into blood, into death, by my choice. I guess it's just icing that Mike wasn't just my sensei; he was part of the pre-planning I hate so much!" Her chin slumped to her chest. "I'm still not free."

"What are you running from? What is it that was planned for you?"

A barking laugh left Amy's lips. "A death-bringer! Still with death! I should be death-bringer to demons, not people. My whole race created for that purpose alone, and I don't want it. I think I'm the only one to try and run from it."

Methos stepped across the window and gently pulled Amy into his arms, hugging until she relaxed against him. "Your path will shift and change through your entire life. Your choices will be made based on what you see and know at that time, and you will have regrets. You can't stop that, but don't let it stop you from learning and growing."

He cupped Amy's jaw and lifted her face to hers and kissed her. No ideas, no demands, no pressure. Amy stiffened under his fingers and with a barely swallowed sigh, Methos let her go.

"What do you want from me? Another mentor?"

Amy backed up a hurried step. "Oh, ancient gods, no! Haven't you been paying attention? They wind up dead! Oncle, Darius…they weren't supposed to die."

"Mike got better."

Amy snorted a sound shorter and quieter than her usual snort. "No, I don't want another mentor. Not from you."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"I don't know!" Amy clasped her hands together, forced herself to stand still. "I'm sorry, but I don't know."

Methos reached out and reclaimed her small hands in his with a feather touch. "I can see it in your face. We want the same thing, so why do you pull away from me?"

Amy's eyes fell and she tried to pull her hands away. "I'm afraid," she admitted with a whisper.

"Why?"

She quit pulling, but stayed silent.

"Why?" Methos pushed. "What makes you so afraid?"

Looking at his feet, she answered. "It's that — It seems that just when we — Because, so far, us being together makes the world fall apart and I don't know that I can handle it happening again."

"The question isn't whether or not you can handle it."

"Then what is it?"

"Will you insist on facing it alone?"

"It's not that simple," Amy began.

"Yes, it is," Methos insisted. "You just spent twenty minutes complaining that you want control of your life, your decisions, your outcome. So, what will you decide? What do you want?"

"It doesn't stop me from being afraid."

"I think the risk is worth it." Methos tugged her closer and with a gentle hand under her jaw, lifted her face again. He stared at Amy until she raised her eyes to his. "What do you want?"

She bit her lip before forcing herself to answer in a whisper, "I want you."