Faith

Methos had no memory of his first life, beyond vague impressions which were more feelings then memories, but he remembered the Gods, and he remembered that while he had never been the firmest believer in them, neither had he been the most skeptical.

So he sang to the Gods at sunup and sundown, trying to hold on to the few memories of his first lifetime that he remembered. Despite his teacher's assurances that he'd never forget anything again, he couldn't shake the feeling that if he'd lost his memory once it could happen again, if he didn't hold them tight. By his teacher's body language he knew he wasn't a believer, but he never said anything aloud.

"A lot of the Gods were or are Immortals," he told Methos around the fire one night five winters after he'd taken him in as a student. "You combine somebody with powers like ours, or magic, or anything outside of the realm of easy understanding, with people who don't have them, and you get one of two reactions most of the time: fear or awe. And either of those can turn into worship or a mob trying to kill you. We're only human. A lot of us were perfectly willing to be worshipped."

"Lyara? Soldash?" Methos asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he couldn't keep himself from asking. He clung to his faith as one of the few things remaining from his first life, not because he was convinced of the existence of the Gods, but because it was one of the few familiar things in a world that already seemed unrecognizable from time and travel.

"I don't know every Immortal, or every God," his teacher replied. "Anyway, I figure it's better to believe in Gods that don't exist than to not believe in Gods that do exist. You never know when a God's passing themself off as an Immortal."

"Inar?" slipped past Methos's lips before he could stop it. He felt the strongest connection to Inar of all the Gods. If his teacher picked that one to discredit… Methos held his breath.

"Inar?" his teacher said, a strange expression on his face. "I haven't gone by that in centuries. People are worshipping me?" He sounded disturbed. "I'm not a God."

Methos looked at him and thought. Inar was the God of hunting and knowledge and the kind of luck that kept you alive when you should have died. His teacher wasn't anything like how he'd imagined Inar to be.

He never said a word about it, but from that moment onward he had faith like he'd never felt before.