Crossover: HL/Pretender (roughly series 2 before Paris HL!verse, series 3 Pretender!verse)

Characters: DM, Jarod

For prompt: 010 Years

Summary: Age is not always just a matter of time.

A/N: Second in a series of HL/Pretender ficlets – let’s see where this one takes me This one’s split into two companion ficlets, one from Jarod’s perspective, one from Duncan’s.

Duncan glanced up from the laptop screen to see the star of the twisted home movies he had been watching looking at him consideringly. He had spent four hundred years learning how to read people, but he hardly needed it with this man. It was written there, in that face, everything he had just seen. A boy, gifted beyond imagination, able to experience the world to a degree that no one has ever experienced before, and yet forced to expand that ability beyond all natural capacity: forced to experience a multitude of things, which no one should have to experience…all while still just a boy.

And he had stayed a boy, Duncan could see that. His body may have grown, but he was still a boy, only now, instead of being locked behind four solid walls, he was trapped in the body of a grown man.

The years of pain were etched in his eyes: each and every one plain to see. A year for every pain, every experiment, every betrayal.

Duncan did not think he had ever met anyone, mortal or Immortal, so old.

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Four hundred years Duncan had said, but he needn’t have bothered, Jarod could see it plainly as soon as he had had a chance to see his guest clearly. Jarod had been tested enough at the Centre to know when to trust his intuition about people: he had been trained for it after all. A good man, but trained for combat. As he moved a deadly power moved with him. But this was a warrior who had grown tired of death: of the weight of the sword at his side, of loved ones growing old and dying around him while he stayed the same…a good man trying to protect the ones he loved.

And he was a good man, Jarod could see that. While he may not have always made the right choices, while he may have killed, he remained an honourable man.

The years of pain were etched in his eyes: each and every one plain to see. A year for every one he killed, for every one who died, for every one he could not save.

Jarod did not think he had ever met anyone so old.